The Flu
by ChandaK562
Summary: Can being called to deal with a flu epidemic possibly be considered an easy assignment? Looks like Agent Coulson and his team are about to find out.
1. Chapter 1

Shield is killing me every Tuesday, so I thought I would try my hand at writing something a little lighter. A massive flu epidemic counts as lighter with how this show is going, right?

His phone was dinging with a text message and Nick Fury glared at it, willing the message to vanish. Other people got funny messages and cute pictures. He got disasters of texts like the time when his car had vanished while he was at a meeting at the Watergate and he had texted Maria Hill to activate the tracker. Not two minutes later, she was back with a reply.

_Good news, we found your car._

_Bad news, your license plate looks remarkably like one belonging to a guy with 92 unpaid traffic citations when viewed by an officer with astigmatism._

_Your car has been towed._

_And crushed into a cube._

_You have 30 days to collect your cube._

_If all of the senior agents are ever called to Washington for meetings I suggest we don't carpool and save the planet in case of a repeat incident._

_Felix or Jasper would undoubtedly get on the wrong Metro trying to get back._

_And I do not want to be in the same country let alone the same city as Victoria being told she's about to be crammed on the Metro during rush hour._

Then there was the text last week from Jasper that he really needed to contact him about.

_Hey, I just heard a bunch of people saying something about hydras. Have we found out that Greek mythology is real now too? Should I bring in my copy of Bullfinch's Mythology to get everyone up to date?_

And he didn't want to think of the number of different agents who had texted him with the happy news that they were in jail and needed to know who should they call for bail. So he knew this text wasn't going to be good. His text messages never were.

Victoria Hand. So at least he could rule a message from some jail out. That was one small positive. He clicked and opened the message.

_I'm closing down all operations into and out of the Hub effective immediately. I expect this to last at least a week. Please reroute all necessary operations accordingly._

She was… Fury barely stopped himself from picking up the phone and calling to demand to know what she was thinking, closing down such a major base without consulting anyone. He had a feeling that a call wouldn't go well. Better a text that he could at least edit first. Five minutes, and five versions later, he hit send.

_Could I ask what the problem is that makes it necessary to shut down the Hub for a week?_

His phone dinged seconds later.

_I have the flu._

The flu, although a frightening thought, picturing Victoria Hand with the flu, he didn't see a reason that a major base needed to be shut down over their leader's illness. But before he could text her to suggest that handing things over to her second in command and going to bed might be a better move than shutting down, his phone dinged again.

_My entire staff has the flu._

_There are three hundred people currently in the Hub, and not a one is healthy. _

_I have locked down the weapons rooms in case anyone decides that a bullet is a reasonable solution for their headache and throbbing body._

He didn't even bother with trying to edit his next message.

_Everyone has the flu? Are you sure it's the flu? I thought that you had a 100 percent of your staff taking the flu shot. this year. What does medical say?_

_If you're asking if I have a doctor's note confirming that I have the flu, the answer is no. However the doctors in medical did say that the 150 people who were in front of me, aching, shivering and shaking did have the flu, and since I have the same symptoms, I sincerely doubt I have anything different. I have locked down the computer systems to prevent unwise access by people who are feverish and possibly delirious._

Not good. This wasn't good.

_What about treatment? What are the doctors telling everyone to do?_

_When I staggered out and back to my office, rather than wait crammed into medical with 150 sick people, with more coming in the door by the moment, the doctors were hanging a sign telling people they have the flu, and to go find a space to sleep somewhere for the next week. I have locked down all of the doors and access into and out of the Hub to prevent the spread of the flu._

_They didn't give out medicine?_

_We have 50 boxes of Tamaflu, because yes, we all did get the flu shot, and no, I have no clue how we ended up with the flu. Did I mention I had 150 people in front of me when I staggered into medical? Right now I am actually thankful for Phil Coulson's continuing existence, because It means I have a bottle of aspirin in my desk left over from the last time his team dropped by. I also have a bottle of liquor that I needed after that last visit, and I found a thermometer in one of the labs. I'm not sure, because I'm seeing double either from the headache, or from missing my last three appointments to get my eyes examined, but I'm fairly sure that the reading says 103. I have made a bed in my office. I intend to mix aspirin with alcohol, and hopefully knock myself out until the fever passes and my office doesn't feel like it is located in Antarctica. Do not text or call me unless the building is on fire. If you find someone that is actually willing to set foot in this den of disease, tell them to bring tissues. I am out. Barring that, forget I exist for the next week and let me sleep!_

He let several minutes pass to make sure there would be no more messages before picking up the phone. He had to contact Coulson, and then he swore he was seeing about getting texting taken off of his phone.


	2. Chapter 2

"Your team has had their flu shots haven't they?" Fury didn't bother with a greeting as Phil Coulson picked up his phone.

"Is this about the request I filed for reimbursement?" Coulson asked with a puzzled look on his face. He had been fairly sure someone was going to call him about his request for reimbursement for a hundred and fifty dollars in flu shots, but he thought it would be accounting, or Victoria Hand who would be calling, not the director. "I know that medical provides our flu shots free,. To be honest, I'm not sure how we all ended up getting them at Walgreens instead." He wasn't even sure he wanted to figure out how it had happened. At least Skye and Simmons had a reason to be in the drugstore, picking up female supplies, and Fitz had probably been there for the snack aisle, but as for the rest… "Skye did have a good point, though, about how much it would cost to go out of our way to a Shield base for free shots, when we could get them right there for only twenty-five dollars."

"You'll be reimbursed. No one on your team has symptoms of the flu, then?"

"No, that's the point of the flu shot, isn't it?" Why did Fury seem so interested in the flu? And why was he feeling a sudden sense of fast approaching trouble?

"You would think, wouldn't you?" Except he had three hundred people who had taken their shot sick with the flu in the Hub and who knows how many who had been too sick to make it in before the base went into lock-down. "I've got an assignment for you that needs to be taken care of fast."

"Centipede?"

"I wish." Centipede, Loki dropping by, whatever Stark was up to that was causing those funny flashing lights off the roof of his tower. He would take any of those before this. "I need you to pick up some supplies and take them to the Hub."

"You want us to handle a supply run?"

"A medical supply run, and then keeping an eye on everyone for the next week. There's a problem at the Hub. Everyone's down with the flu."

"The… Wait, when you say everyone, do you mean…."

"Victoria sent a message informing me of the flu and that she was shutting down the Hub and putting everything on lockdown not more than ten minutes ago."

Coulson closed his eyes for a moment, imagining Victoria Hand with the flu. "This is because I died, isn't it? You think I'm eager to face death again?" But, still, these people were his fellow agents. If they needed help, he was going to do all he could. "How bad is it? I thought Victoria was insisting that everyone who set foot in the Hub have proof of a flu shot after the incident with the agent from MI-13 who sneezed and burned her desk to ashes."

"They had their shots. I have no idea why all of them are down with the flu. I'm waiting on a call from medical here for that." Fury closed his eyes for a moment. It was really to early in the day for an epidemic, and what if it had hit any of their other bases? But surely he would have gotten at least a few other texts if other agents were dropping like flies from the flu. He hoped the lack of additional texts might be a good sign. "There are 300 people in the Hub. Victoria locked down the building so no one can come or go. You'll have to override that when you get there. They only had 50 boxes of Tamaflu, so we're pulling more to be delivered along with acetaminophen, ibuprofen and aspirin. Medical isn't answering there, so we're not sure what else they might need beyond that." And beyond the softest tissues he could find to ship off to Victoria. "They should have IV fluids, antibiotics, hopefully the basics if this ends up being more serious than expected. Victoria said that her fever was 103. Would your biochemist know what sort of problems that could cause if she isn't the only one with a temperature like that?"

"I'm sure she can handle it. Just tell me when the supplies are ready and where to pick them up. And send through a list of the personnel that are in the Hub so we can divide them up. I'll go and brief the team." Coulson ended the call and pulled himself to his feet. "Everyone, briefing in ten!" He called to his team. "Director Fury just called with a situation!"

"Do we finally have a lead on Centipede?" May asked as soon as they were assembled.

"No, there's a situation at the Hub they need our help with."

"A situation at the Hub?" Fitz asked suspiciously. "This situation isn't like that last little situation, now is it, because if it is, I'm turning in my resignation."

"No, no suicide missions, no missions without extraction plans. This is medical. Fury's trying to figure out how it happened, but there are 300 people at the Hub right now who are down with the flu. We need to take medical supplies to them and keep an eye on them until they recover."

"The flu? Didn't they get their flu shots?" Jemma asked.

"Did they get shots from the defective batch?" Skye asked and then when everyone looked at her in confusion she added. "It's trending on Twitter. Apparently some company made a mistake with a batch of the shots they distributed. It was kind of confusing because there are about a million explanations for what the specific problem with the shots is, but basically, they don't prevent the flu, they give you the flu. Sixty people are in the hospital so far."

"Okay," He was going to have to call Fury back and alert him to this, but for now it didn't really change anything. No matter why they were sick, they still had 300 sick agents to figure out how to care for. "Skye, see if you can find out what those people ended up in the hospital for, and how many total are looking to be effected, not counting our agents. Jemma, what sort of supplies are we going to need?"

"The Director really expects us to…" Jemma paled but then shook her head. They wouldn't be talking about this if the Director really didn't have the insane idea that the six of them could somehow tend 300 sick people. Okay, what did she know about the flu? "Anti-virals, obviously. Medication for the fever and pain."

"Fever. Victoria told the director her fever was 103. How serious is that?"

"103? This is a suicide mission, I knew it!" Fitz moaned.

"Oh, Fitz." Jemma murmured. "A fever of 103 isn't going to cause Agent Hand to try to kill you. It's actually not as bad as it sounds. Some people don't recommend medicating for anything 102 and under. I'm sure 103 feels terrible, but it's not horribly serious with medication. 105, 106, that's when you need to be concerned, and prolonged periods of 107 or 108, can of course cause brain damage but… IVs for dehydration, cooling blankets. They should have those, wouldn't you imagine?"

"IVs, I'm sure, cooling blankets, I'll ask the director."

"Really, the fever isn't the worst thing." Jemma continued. "Pneumonia or another secondary infection is what we'll have to watch for."

"600 reported cases so far, 60 and climbing in the hospital." Skye said as she looked up from her laptop. "That's over ten percent."

Does it say what they were hospitalized for?" Jemma asked with worry. Over a ten percent hospitalization rate? Didn't these people remember she was a PhD, not a medical doctor?

"No pneumonia, at least not yet, that's good, right?" Skye said. "Dehydration, pain, one man was shivering so hard he fell out of bed and broke his leg in four places, pain, pain worse than a 42 hour labor with ten pound twins, and more pain."

"Morphine." Jemma said. "Antibiotics to be on the safe side. Fluids, tea, juice, broths." 300 people. How were they going to take care of 300 people, especially if the rate of 10 percent being sick enough to be hospitalized held?

"I'll talk to the director and see about getting as much of that as possible. The Hub has supplies, but better to have more just in case. Jemma, could you keep thinking about it, and let me know if there's anything else we might need? Skye, keep looking, and see if you can find more information on those shots. Fury's going to want to know if what took down one of our bases was really an accident."


	3. Chapter 3

"Alright," Jemma said as the cargo doors of the bus opened, and the eerie silence of the Hub washed over the six agents standing there in front of carts stocked with boxes of Tamaflu, bottles of acetaminophen, ibuprofen, thermometers, and aspirin, water, tea and juices. She still couldn't believe that the director was expecting them to take care of 300 sick people alone, but at least she had developed a list for how to try. "Does everyone have their list?"

"Right here." Skye waved the paper and then read. "Hand out Tamaflu and drinks, take temperatures and anything 102 or over, dose them with medicine. Anything over 105, come and get you. Dehydration, come and get you. Write everything down. Recheck temperatures every two hours." Checking temperatures for 300 people every two hours? The would no more than finish the first check than it would be time to start all over again. "I don't mean to question, okay, actually, I do, but shouldn't there be medical teams in here, and not us? The last I checked, over a thousand people have been hit with this, not counting us, and the number in the hospital is up to 150."

"We would have medical teams if they could risk sending them." Coulson said. "According to the medical staff the director is working with, we did get part of the effected batch of vaccines. So far, only the Hub seems to be experiencing problems, but it's going to take days probably to sort things out. Until then, we're the only agents Fury trusts to deal with this, since we're the only agents he can find who went against protocol and got our shots from an outside source, that doesn't deal with the company who caused this problem."

"The director sent lists." Coulson continued as he passed out more papers. "Fifty people each, we should be able to handle that. There are forty in medical. Fitzsimmons, you're handling those. The rest should be either in their offices or at or near their workstations. All of that is on the lists. I'm reactivating the lockdown on the external doors. And the lockdown on the weapons rooms, and the computers should still be in place. Other than that, all of you will have full access to the building. Follow Simmons' instructions, I'm sure this will all go fine."

Jemma was actually smiling slightly when she closed the door on the last agent on her list and joined Fitz in the hall. Working with Fitz, they had been able to check of their list of sick agents much faster than she had expected, and better yet, she had only had to start three IVs so far. Maybe the director was right. Maybe they would be able to manage tending 300 sick people.

"Are the two of you finished with your lists yet? Because I need help, if you are. Never mind, I need help even if you aren't. I've got a major problem!" Skye called as she hurried down the hallway towards them dragging her cart.

"What's wrong?" Jemma asked, feeling more than a bit of panic that she he thought had gone away hitting her at the expression on Skye's face. Was someone showing signs of pneumonia?

"There's one person on my list…" Skye pointed to the name. "Do you know if any reason why the Director might hate me and be trying to kill me?"

"I'm sure that the Director wouldn't do that."

"You got assigned Agent Hand to look after? Do you have a will?" Fitz asked as he looked at the list in Skye's hand.

"Fitz, stop." Simmons told him with a glare, before turning what she hoped was a reassuring look on Skye. "You're bringing her medicine. I'm sure that Agent Hand will be happy to see you."

"I wish I were sure." Skye was picturing all she had ever seen on TV about not poking sleeping bears, and she couldn't help but thinking of Agent Hand as a scary, feverish sleeping bear. And according to Jemma's list, she was supposed to poke this sleeping bear awake to be medicated and have her temperature taken. She could see so many ways this could end in disaster and pain. "Come with me? Please? Maybe with her fever she'll have forgotten that the two of you are PhDs and not actual doctors."

"That fever wasn't seriously high from what Agent Coulson said," Jemma said slowly, "but maybe high enough for her to have forgotten that incident with Agent Sitwell." And Agent Hand was rather high ranking. It was probably a good idea for someone with a bit of proper training to take a look at her. "We'll go and help you."

"But if I get killed doing this, I hope you know I plan to haunt you forever." Fitz informed Skye as the trio hurried in the direction of Agent Hand's office, dragging their carts with them.

After a brief scuffle at the door, Skye was forced to knock. "Agent Hand? It's Agent Coulson's team." She called. Better not to identify themselves by names in case the fever hadn't messed with her memories of them. "We have medicine for you. Can we come in?"

"It's quiet in there. Do you think she heard?" Fitz asked.

"Maybe she's sleeping still. Sleep's good for the flu, right? Maybe we should let her sleep." Skye said.

Sleep was good, but Jemma couldn't help but have a concern about that fever. "We'll be very, very quiet. Maybe she'll sleep through us checking her." She said partially to reassure herself and partially to reassure Skye and Fitz. She slid the door open just enough to ease in with the other two following behind her.

The room was dark, and it took a minute for their eyes to adjust, but when they did, they saw the bed that had been made on the floor out of couch cushions, pillows, and at least ten blankets, but after a few seconds they realized what they weren't seeing. Agent Hand was nowhere to be found in the office.


	4. Chapter 4

"Where is she?" Jemma looked around the room, and behind the desk, trying to figure out where someone who had to be six feet tall and sick with the flu could be hiding.

"She was here, anyway." Skye murmured as she knelt by the makeshift bed and picked up a strand of Agent Hand's oddly red streaked hair that was caught on one of the pillows. Why, oh, why hadn't she came here first after spotting Agent Hand's name on her list of people to tend instead of panicking and saving her for last? If anything had happened….

"We need to tell Coulson." Fitz said. Although the amount of trouble they were going to be in when they had to tell him a level eight agent had gone missing….

"No." Skye took a deep breath and ordered herself to calm down. "We can find her. She couldn't have gone far. The doors were all locked until Coulson sent the override. She's got to be somewhere in the building. Bathroom, maybe?" The bathroom. She paled slightly thinking of the disaster a feverish, shaky person in the bathroom could be. What if she fell, hit her head on a sink and knocked herself into a coma? Why, oh, why hadn't she came here first, no matter how frightening Agent Hand could be?

"Bathroom. That's possible." Jemma said with a hopeful tone. "If the headache is as bad as some of the people we saw are saying, I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't cause a degree of nausea. Or maybe she went for water? I don't think that would help much as far as fluids go." she gestured at the half empty bottle of liquor as she spoke.

"Okay, we'll take the bathrooms. Fitz, go and look, check for water fountains or maybe a kitchenette on this level. She couldn't have gone far." And wherever she had gone, Skye sent up a silent prayer, please let her be on her feet, or curled up asleep and not injured from a fall.

They were back in Agent Hand's office twenty minutes later, and Skye felt like crying. Nothing. There was not a single sign of here anywhere on that level, or anywhere on the levels immediately above and below. Of course, they hadn't found blood, strands of black or red hair on sharp edges of counters, or signs of a fall or other accident, which was sort of good but still, Agent Hand was missing. Why hadn't she came up here first, or at least followed the list order instead of saving checking on her until the very last?

"At least…" Jemma started to say, but stopped, not sure of anything slightly positive about this situation. "Her fever wasn't seriously high," she finally came up with. "And it looks like she did try to take something for it, although aspirin and alcohol might not be the best mix."

"And she was trying to do her job even with the fever, wasn't she?" Fitz added. "Putting everything in lockdown. We're probably worrying for nothing."

"She…. Wait. Wait." Skye lifted her head, her eyes bright as something hit her. "She was doing her job! That's where she is! She locked down the building, she locked down the computers and the weapons rooms, but what about the labs?"

"The labs. But couldn't she have locked them down from here?" Jemma asked.

"Not if she didn't remember the labs until after she put the computers into lockdown. Fitz, could she lock down the labs manually if she had to?"

"With the computers locked down, that's the only way she could do it." Fitz said with a nod.

"That's got to be where she is! Come on, let's go and get her, and get her back to bed where she belongs." And please, please don't let her end up in the middle of some sort of lab accident before they could find her, and drag her back to her sick bed.


	5. Chapter 5

Locked lab doors. Skye had never been so happy to see locked lab doors in her life. Locked lab doors meant that they were on the right track, and hopefully they would soon have her missing, scary charge found and back in bed where she belonged once more. If there just were a few less labs in the building, though, that would be a real plus. And a few less flights of stairs, too. Surely Agent Hand wouldn't have tried the stairs, would have stuck to the elevators, but she couldn't help but fear every time they opened a stairwell door to be on the safe side that they were going to find her crumpled in a heap at the bottom. "Jemma, is this going to make her worse, wandering all over the building, instead of being in bed resting?"

"I'm not sure. I'm honestly not sure." Jemma said a moment. "Right now, rest and saving her strength is the best thing. Fighting off the flu is going to take a lot of energy, and if she uses everything she has trying to do her job, it's going to make recovering difficult. And if a secondary infection sets in…" The idea of any of the sick agents developing a secondary infection was terrifying to her, especially the potential for pneumonia. If that happened, but surely if things got to that point, Director Fury would send more help even if they hadn't got the issues with the flu shots straightened out yet. She was a PhD, not a regular doctor. If pneumonia set in, if anyone got bad enough to need to be put on a ventilator… She paled and almost started to hyperventilate at the thought.

"Secondary infection? That's bad, that's really bad, isn't it?" Skye paled herself at the expression on Jemma's face. "How bad? Are we talking miserable sick for a month bad, or… or call the funeral home bad?"

"It could be either?" Jemma said reluctantly. "But I'm sure… These are Shield agents. They're in good health. They have to be. Complications are much more likely in the elderly, or children, or people with health problems, not healthy agents."

But where did Agent Hand fall on the scale of likelihood of developing complications? That was what Skye was worried about. Why hadn't she gone to look in on her right away when she saw the name on her list? If nothing else, then she would have found out she was wandering around sooner, and they could have found her and drug her back to bed sooner. She shivered slightly as images of Agent Hand deathly sick and of coffins joined the already nightmarish ones of falls, head injuries and comas dancing through her head. "We've got to find her. Does anyone have any ideas, besides checking the labs one at a time until we get lucky?" And they couldn't split up to do it, either. It was probably going to take all three of them to drag Agent Hand back to bed when they found her. Being short, and having short teammates, definitely not good when you were facing lagging someone who was six feet tall and feverish off for bedrest.

"Keep going down is the only thing I can think of. Most of the labs are on the lower levels for the shielding in case of accidents." Fitz said after a moment. "If the computers weren't locked down, we could maybe see if any of the labs are still open, but…"

"But unlocking the computers might undo the locks on the labs, right?" Skye said. So checking every lab they could find, and all of the stairways too looked like their only option. Why did this place have to have so many labs, though? Labs just full of things that a sick person could get hurt with? "We have got to find her."

"Why is it so hot down here?" Jemma asked the moment the three of them stepped into what they were hoping was the lowest level of the building. "We don't use furnaces, do we, Fitz?"

"A furnace? A thing that has a fire, and seems extremely dangerous for a sick person to be around? Please tell me we don't have one of those!" Skye moaned as the thought of burns or worse joined the horrible images of what could have happened to Agent Hand that were dancing through her head. It had taken them an hour to work their way down this far, and they were going to be seriously late checking the agents on their lists again, but Agent Hand was still missing. All they had found was locked lab after locked lab, and no sign of the missing agent. What if there was a furnace? What if she had fallen IN?

"No, no furnaces. I'm not sure what it is." Fitz said as he pulled out some sort of device and waved it around before frowning. "It's not radioactive, anyway. That's good, right?"

"Finding Agent Hand, that's what would be good." Skye murmured. What were they going to do if she wasn't down here? She headed down the hallway, dragging her cart behind her, tugging at doors on one side while Jemma and Fitz took the other side.

Locked. Locked. Locked. Locked. She was so used to doors refusing to open, she almost jumped when one swung open at her touch. It was supposed to be a lab, but it looked like someone had converted into a storeroom instead, a storeroom that felt like an oven. Skye stepped in with the cart behind her and hit the lights. At first she only saw the piles of equipment and other discarded items, and then she looked down and spotted the lump wrapped in a blanket, curled into a ball on the floor, and the flash of red in a bit of dark hair.

"Jemma, Fitz, down here!" She shouted before hurrying over and dropping to her knees. "Agent Hand?" she called as she reached out and touched her. "Jemma!" She called again as she felt the almost burning skin. But she was alive, and breathing, and even if she felt like she was on fire, it didn't look like she was hurt. And maybe she was a large, scary, sick, sleeping bear, but… Before Skye could thank about it, she was hugging her hard. Large, scary, sick sleeping bears who had been lost and were found again definitely needed hugs.

Spmething had hold of her. Victoria's eyelids fluttered, but she couldn't find the energy to open them fully, but she shoved at what had her, trying to push it off.

"Hey, it's okay. It's just Skye, from Agent Coulson's team. We're here to help, okay? It's just the harmless hacker from Agent Coulson's team, and the two scientists who failed all of their field tests are coming. They're harmless too, I swear."

"Completely, absolutely harmless." Jemma called as she hurried in and joined Skye on the floor. She cringed as she reached out and felt the hot skin. "Can you get me some of the water and a thermometer? I want to see how bad this is. Here, ma'am, let's try to make you a bit more comfortable, alright?" She said as she somehow pried the edges of the blanket out of Agent Hand's fingers and tugged it off of her. Flushed, skin, burning hot to the touch, but no sign of sweating, oh, this wasn't good.

"Here. We should probably get her jacket off too, right?" Skye said as she handed over the thermometer. "The water isn't exactly cool, but do you think wet cloths might help?"

"Sponge off her neck and face. It might make her a little more comfortable in any case. Here we go, ma'am. Let's see if we can get this off, alright?" Jemma said she between the two of them they lifted the sick agent and somehow tugged her jacket free.

"Why was she still in here, anyway? This place is an oven." Skye murmured half to herself as she tugged at the jacket and somehow pulled one of the sleeves free. She she soaked it in water from one of the bottles and gently pressed it to Agent Hand's forehead.

She still couldn't open her eyes, couldn't move to protest the hands touching her, but as she felt something being poked into her mouth she whispered. "The door."

"The…Fitz!" Skye turned and shouted as she heard Fitz come into the room. "The door! Don't let the door close!

"You think the door locked on her?" Jemma looked up, horror in her eyes as Skye jumped up and hurried around Fitz to tug the door open.

"Oh, yes, the door locked behind her. And it's locked on us too." Now what were they going to do? Skye thought as she pulled and hit everything that she could think of that might make the door open without a response. Trapped in a room that was practically an oven with a terribly sick person. What were they going to do?


	6. Chapter 6

"Okay. Okay. Call Coulson and he'll get us out." Skye said as she pulled out her phone. "No problem. Out of here in no time." But, she tried to dial and then tried to send a text. "Fitz, Jemma, do either of you have your phones, and a signal, please tell me one of you has a phone that might actually connect or text because I'm getting nothing."

"Nothing here." Fitz said as he pulled out his phone but got the same results as Skye. "It's probably the shielding around the labs, and I think this level might be partially underground. That's probably blocking the signal."

"I left my phone upstairs, but, there has to be a way to contact someone from here. This was a lab, even if they seem to have turned it into a storeroom." Jemma looked up, worry in her eyes. "There has to be a connection to the comm system, or a phone. What if there was a lab accident? They would have to have a way to call for help."

"Right. We'll look." Fitz said with a nod. "You're right. There has to be something."

"Fitz, you look. I'm going to need a second pair of hands over here." Jemma said as she looked down at the reading on the thermometer and tried not to wince. 105.7. Not good, bordering on disastrous.

"What do you need me to do?" Skye asked as she hurried over and knelt on the floor, wincing herself when she saw the reading on the thermometer. Wasn't that a temperature they told you to cook things at?

"We need to try to get medicine and fluids into her. She's severely dehydrated, and her fever's dangerously high. I wish I had thought to bring along more supplies. She needs to be on an IV drip at the least." But how was she to know that they were going to end up trapped in a lab that was alarmingly ovenlike?

"Okay." Skye jumped up and hurried over to the cart. "Tamaflu. Will that even help right now?"

"Not immediately, but we need to get her started on it anyway." Jemma wet the torn sleeve Skye had made into a wet compress once more and gently ran it over Agent Hand's face and neck. With how hot the room was, and the air stuffy and heavy, she wasn't sure it would do much good as far as lowering the fever was concerned, but maybe it would comfort her a bit, and would let her know that there was someone there trying take care of her.

"Tamaflu and acetaminophen." She grabbed the box and a bottle of the medicine along with a couple more bottles of water before hurrying over to join Jemma. "Do you want me to lift her a little? She's never going to be able to swallow anything flat on her back."

"Right. Agent Hand? Ma'am, we have some medicine you need to take. Skye's going to raise you up a bit, so you can take it, alright? Just try to swallow. It might take a little bit, but it will help you feel better."

The voices around her sounded a bit like buzzing bees, but Victoria did pick out the words medicine and better, so she didn't struggle as she felt someone move behind her, her head and shudders being propped up, and first pills and then water being coaxed down her throat. But as soon as the liquid hit her stomach, nausea washed over her, and she moaned, trying to pull away before she was forced to swallow more of the liquid. "Sick."

"Okay, we'll try a little more later then. That's fine. You just rest, and let the medicine settle, alright?" Jemma said in what she hoped was a soothing tone as they got the sick agent laying down once more, letting her curl onto her side with the folded blanket as a pillow.

"Is there anything else we can do?" Surely there was something else besides medicine that would take who knows how long to kick in. Without even thinking she started to slowly rub Agent Hand's back in small circles, like the nuns had done what seemed like a lifetime ago when she had been sick. She wasn't sure why it had helped her then, probably the touch more than anything else, but maybe it would help now somehow too.

"Keep her as comfortable as possible given the circumstances, and keep her still. Try to get her to drink if she can at all without throwing up. Fitz, please tell me you've found a comm panel or a phone!"

"Found a comm panel, but it looks like someone's been scavenging it for parts. When she feels better, I'll bet Agent Hand is going to have a fit over this. I'm sure she didn't have a clue someone was taking the easy way of getting spare parts. I don't see any way I could get it running again, at least not with what we have here." Fitz called from behind piles of discarded items. "I found a sink, though. Would water that's at least a little bit colder help?"

"Cooler water would be perfect, as much of it as you can, but not too cold, lukewarm. We've got to get her temperature down, but we've got to be careful doing it."

"Do we need to get more of her clothes off?" Skye asked as Fitz came hurrying over with a container that looked a bit like a fishbowl filled with water.

"If you're taking clothes off, I might try working on that panel after all." Fitz said.

"No. If we could get some air flow going, undressing her might help, but with the way things are in here, best to leave everything in place. It might help hold the water against her skin for a bit longer, in any case. And Fitz, work on the door, if you can. There has to be a way out of here." Jemma said as she dipped the torn sleeve into the water, cool but not too cool, thank goodness. "Okay, we need to do this over the sides of the neck, the collar bones, anywhere there are large blood vessels." But even if what they were trying did help, it could only do so much. They had to figure a way out of there fast.


	7. Chapter 7

"Fitz, are you having any luck with that door?" Skye called as she looked up from running the makeshift cloth, dripping with water over Agent Hand's neck and upper chest. How long had they been trapped in here now? And did it seem like it was getting hotter?

"I think it is hotter." Jemma said as she looked at Skye and then back down at Agent Hand with worry. No matter what they tried to bring her temperature down, it wasn't going to do much good if the room they were trapped in was turning into even more of an oven. "Fitz?"

"I'm trying. I'm trying to fix it. Agent Hand, ma'am, when you're feeling better, you're probably going to want to find out who did this and demote them to level nothing janitor." Fitz shook his head from where he was poking in the electronics of the door, what he had hoped would be the most vulnerable part that would let him unlock it. And it probably would have, if some idiot hadn't taken parts from there too, and it looked like they had caused some sort of short because wires were fused in ways he was sure they shouldn't be. And seeing as the only tool he had at the moment was a screwdriver that he had found among the discarded items, and it had a large chip out of the tip, he wasn't going to be able to work at his usual speed "I'm working as fast as I can. You know, this is the perfect situation for a monkey. If I just had a monkey…."

"Fitz, I swear if you can get that door open, I will see about buying your monkey." Jemma picked up the thermometer. "It's been at least thirty minutes. Let's see if the acetaminophen might be starting to take effect. Ma'am, I need to check your temperature again, alright?"

"Sick." Victoria was half afraid that she would start to throw up, just opening her mouth, and whatever they were poking between her lips nearly made her gag. Some foggy part of her mind wondered if the pills they had made her swallow might have been poison. But the voices talking above her did sound familiar, and every touch had been gentle, and careful not to cause her additional pain, so maybe it was alright. And it wasn't as if she could do anything even if it wasn't alright. She couldn't even manage opening her eyes.

"I know. I promise when we get out of here, I have some medicine that will help with that." Jemma kicked herself for about the millionth time for not bringing more supplies with her, but how could she have even imagined that they would end up trapped like this? The beeping of the thermometer pulled her mind away from those thoughts, only to be hit by even more frightening thoughts as she saw the reading. 106.2. Her temperature was going up instead of coming down. She bit her lip to keep from hyperventilating. They were doing everything they could given the circumstances, and it just wasn't working.

106.2. Skye didn't even have to ask. She could tell how bad that was from the expression on Jemma's face. "So what do we do now?"

"Cooler water is the only thing I can think of, and getting that door open." Jemma said with a shake of her head as she tried to force the sound of fear out of her voice.

"Okay. Cooler water." Skye found the sink and filled the fish bowl or whatever Fitz had found to use as a basin with what she hoped was appropriately cool water before hurrying back. They had ripped the rest of Agent Hand's jacket up for compresses and cloths, and she dipped the one that had been on her forehead into the fresh water to cool it before applying it again. "Does that feel any better?"

"Lights? Seeing lights?" Her eyes weren't open, Victoria knew, so why were lights suddenly dancing down the sides of her eyes, the flashes pounding in her head.

No, the water wasn't too cold, which was Jemma's first thought. "Ma'am, have you ever had a migraine before? I think it might be something similar to a migraine. Just try not to look at the lights, alright? Fitz, is there something else you can try besides accessing the electronics for the door? There's glass, isn't there? Wouldn't it break? We need to be upstairs now!"

"Glass is bulletproof and surprisingly well secured. The wiring's our best bet. What's wrong?" Fitz said as he turned and saw that Jemma was dead white.

"We need out of here now, that's what's wrong." Jemma said as she pulled herself to her feet and drug Skye over to join Fitz at the door. She pitched her voice as low as possible and hoped Agent Hand didn't have the best hearing at the moment. "What she's seeing, the lights, that sounds like a aura. The sometimes proceed migraines, but they can also proceed seizures, and with her temperature as high as it is… If she has a seizure here, without proper equipment or medication, the odds are she would suffer brain damage or die. We need to get out of here now."

"There's nothing you could do for her?" Skye whispered.

"Not without medication. We need to get her out of here and upstairs now."

"Okay. Okay. Fitz… Wait, Fitz come and take a look at this." Skye grabbed the engineer by the arm and drug him to the workstation she had noticed when she was getting the water. "Is that some sort of vent at the top of that hood thing?"

"It's a vent." Fitz said after a minute's examination. "Not sure what it's supposed to vent, though. It looks too big for chemical fumes or smoke."

"More important, it looks like it might go up to at least the next level, and it looks like a person, a small person, might fit."

"Skye…" Jemma started to say, but a look at Agent Hand stopped that thought. This might be her only chance, and how dangerous could the vent system be? "Here, we'll help you up."

"Okay, just take care of her. I'll be back as soon as I can." Skye reached into the vent as the two scientists lifted her up, and somehow got her fingers wrapped around a small projection, pulling as they lifted until she was inside. She wiggled, bracing herself on the wall, before reaching up again, and starting to pull herself higher in the tight space, moving as fast as she could. Get up at least one level and start banging on the walls, or maybe get reception on her phone. This had to work!


	8. Chapter 8

The vent was tight, a whole lot tighter than it had looked when she started up. On one hand, it made it a whole lot easier for her to climb, letting her brace herself and pretty much wiggle up the shaft, but on the other hand, she wasn't sure how she was going to be able to get out, unless someone broke through a wall to free her. How hard was it to break through a wall? Was it harder or easier than a door? A door, Coulson, May or Ward could handle no problem. Surely a wall couldn't be much more difficult, right? Skye shook her head, forcing herself to focus. Worry about how she was going to get out of here later. Right now the most important thing to think about was getting someone's attention and getting help downstairs for Agent Hand fast.

Getting someone's attention would probably be a lot easier if people hadn't poked heavy and noisy equipment against the wall in front of the vent shaft she was climbing up, that was for sure. She had to be at the next level, but it sounded like there was a jackhammer or something going on the other side. Had someone forgotten and left a jackhammer plugged in when they collapsed with the flu?

Up, she pulled herself up a few inches more, and suddenly there was a breeze brushing her fingertips, the only warning she had to jerk her hand back before it could be caught in the fan blades that were whirling above her, alertly sharp looking fan blades.

A fan. Perfect. Just perfect. Now what was she going to do? If she went down, and she wasn't sure that she could, Agent Hand was going either going to die or end up with enough brain damage that she would probably wish she was dead. Poor Jemma had looked about ready to cry, so Skye knew it had to be beyond serious.

She had to find some way to keep going up. Skye looking up, trying to see around the whirling blades. Was that… It looked like there was another opening, running parallel to the vent she was in, about twenty feet above the fan, and she felt a bit of hope. If she could make it to that, and if it was big enough to squeeze through, surely she could make someone hear her. If she could just get past the fan.

She really ought to have asked Fitz for some sort of tool in case she ran into a problem, but it was too late to think of that now. There had to be some way she could stop those blades and get past the fan. No way to kick it, though, and it looked like it would take off fingers if she tried to grab it with her hands. What did she have that she could use? Her phone was out, on the off chance she might be able to use it in here. What… She raised her head to look up at the fan, and the movement of the chain around her neck hit her. The necklace? The chain was probably stronger than it should be, she knew from an experience she had had with a mugger before hooking up with the team. If she could get it around one of the blades, maybe she could stop the fan for at least a few seconds, long enough to grab it anyway, and come up with a way to stop it permanently. Anyway, it was the only idea she had.

She unfastened the chain from around her neck and eased up a few inches, the better to try to toss it and catch on one of the blades. It bounced and slipped off first once and then twice but apparently the third time was the charm, because Skye suddenly had the fan and she didn't know what to do but to let go of her foothold on the wall and let the necklace and the fan take her weight.

She slid down almost half a foot, her fingers burning and then there was a snap from above her head, and she slipped down a few more inches before she could catch herself and risk raising her head.

It worked. She gasped in relief, almost not believing what she was seeing for a moment. Somehow, iit had actually worked. The fan was swaying, blades bent to the side and not moving. And her necklace was even in one piece. Surely that was a good sign. She felt herself moving faster as she climbed, easing around the blades and collecting her necklace before starting towards the opening she had seen.

Small, it was small, though, almost smaller than the vent she was currently in, but…. If she was right, about where she was, this had to run either behind a wall or in the ceiling leading to one of the main areas of the Hub. If she could get there, she could get help.

"Just please don't let there be any more fans." She muttered to herself as she crawled through the opening and started to ease forward on her stomach, squishing herself up as much as she could and trying to think small. And please let Jemma think up something to help Agent Hand until she could get back with help.


	9. Chapter 9

"Fitz, is the door co-operating at all?" Jemma didn't even look up, she could just sense what the expression on Fitz's face would be and what he would say if he could bring himself to say anything at all. The door just wasn't coming open, and it had been so long, too long, since Skye had crawled up that vent in her attempt to get them help. She gently ran one of the wet cloths over Agent Hand's face and neck, although at this point she didn't think it was doing anything to cool her, even though the water was as cold as she dared use. At least the touch might help, though, would let her know that she wasn't alone. Jemma couldn't imagine anything worse than that, to be alone and… No, she couldn't let herself think that. She wouldn't let herself think it. Agent Hand was still fighting this. They had to help her fight somehow, that was all there was to it.

"lWires are fused, parts are missing. My best guess is that someone didn't want to fill out the papers to requisition more parts, so they've been stripping things from here." Fitz called over his shoulder. "Agent Hand, ma'am, when you're feeling better I'll make a list for you of what whoever did this pulled. I'm afraid it's likely some sort of fire hazard if they installed things the same way they removed things."

Jemma smiled slightly at Fitz's words before picking up the thermometer again. "Let's check your temperature again, ma'am, and see if the medicine might be starting to work, finally, alright?"

"Lights." Her eyes were closed, Victoria knew they were closed, so how in the world was she seeing lights dancing across her vision? She tried to reach out, but her hand barely twitched in response, and then there was someone there, taking hold of her fingers and holding her still.

"The lights are just from the headache, ma'am. Just try to keep still, alright? Moving will just make it worse." Not to mention Jemma was more than a little afraid that movement, or anything really might be enough to push Agent Hand into a seizure at this point. The thermometer beeped, and she had to force herself to look down at the reading after she removed it. 106.7. She blinked hard, but a tear slipped down her cheek anyway. She was doing everything she could, and poor Agent Hand was fighting so hard. Most people would have slipped into a coma by this point, but somehow she was still clinging to consciousness. She was fighting, but unless Jemma could think of something to try fast, it was a fight that she had no hope of winning. She blinked again, and felt more tears slipping down her cheeks. Surely there was something she was missing! Okay, she wasn't a medical doctor, but she was a bio-chemist. She knew something about heat and the human body. Sure there was something she could think of to try to help this, or at least some way to prevent a seizure!

"Jemma…" Fitz said as he came over to her, with an expression she had never seen before on his face.

"You can't fix it?"

"Not without more parts, or better tools." Fitz felt a tear running down his own cheek at the expression on Jemma's face, like she had just lost all hope. And Agent Hand, so she had sent him on a suicide mission without telling him, that didn't mean she deserved to be facing a death like this. This was heat. This was science. What were both of them missing?

"You tried, Fitz. That's all you can do." Jemma said softly, before turning her attention back to Agent Hand, and running the wet cloth over her face once more. Even if the odds were against it helping, she had to keep trying something. "It's alright, ma'am. You just hold on a little longer and we'll have this fixed, I promise."

Fix it. There had to be some way to fix things, or at least keep them from getting worse. He couldn't open the door. He had let the door close and lock them in. There had to be something he could do to fix this. And then it hit him and he rushed into the piles of discarded and broken equipment.

The first crash made Jemma jump. "Fitz! What are you doing? Stop!" More crashes and louder crashes filled the room, and it sounded like he was taking a hammer to everything he could find. "Fitz!" She looked over in the direction the crashes were coming from, and then down at Agent Hand, her eyes going wide with sudden horror and fear. Could sudden loud noises be enough to trigger a seizure in someone who was on the edge of one? She had to stop him, but at the same time if she moved and Agent Hand did start to seize… Without medicine there was very little she could do, but if she wasn't there at all when it happened… Seizures, likely respiratory arrest, brain damage. Jemma teared up again imagining it. "FITZ! STOP!"

And then there was a yelp of pain followed by another crash, and suddenly everything was silent for a moment before Fitz called. "Jemma, I broke it!"

"You broke what?" Jemma didn't dare look up. There were warning signs indicating a seizure was about to start, weren't there? Something besides the auras?

"What was making the room into an oven. It looks, well, it looked like some sort of heater from a nightmare. I'm surprised that thing didn't start a fire. That ought to help, right? I know it isn't getting the door open and getting Agent Hand somewhere cool, but if it doesn't get hotter…"

"Fitz, I could kiss you!" Jemma called, and barely kept from jumping up to do just that. If she wasn't having to fight the rising heat in the room along with the infection induced fever… A wave of hope washed over her. They just might be able to do something, and if nothing else get her stabilized. "I need more water, and do you see anything we could use for a fan?" Keep sponging her off, and if they could get some air circulating around her, that had to help!

"Ostrich feathers? I think they're ostrich feathers." Fitz hurried over, several giant feathers in his hand. "Would those work?" He dropped them to the ground and scooped up the bowl, wincing slightly as it touched his burnt fingertips. But what did burns matter when faced with a possibly dying woman? Jemma could fix them later when they were out of there.

"Ostrich…" Did she even want to know what ostrich feathers were doing in a Shield lab turned storeroom? What mattered was that they might just work as a makeshift fan. "Take the feathers and fan." She ordered as soon as Fitz came back. "I'll handle the water." This probably was crazy, but please, it had to work!


	10. Chapter 10

"Have you seen Simmons?" May called as she spotted Coulson coming down the hallway. There were a couple of agents on her list that she wanted the scientist to take a look at. They didn't seem bad yet, mild dehydration, she thought, but she wanted to have someone take a look before it could possibly get worse.

"She's probably in medical with Fitz. Have you checked there?" Coulson said as his phone rang. He pulled it out and sighed when he saw it was the director. Please let this be a call saying more help was on the way. They were doing alright so far, with all of the sick agents tended, and no serious illness yet, but if they had to manage for a week on their own…. How were they going to feed three hundred people? And that was just the worry that he had for after they got them over the first agonies of the flu. "Sir?"

"Just calling for an update on the situation." Fury said. "How are the infected agents?"

"They're sick with the flu. They're about how you would expect them to be, especially since this seems to be an extremely painful form of the virus. They're medicated, and Agent Simmons has plans for how to deal with the situation if anything serious crops up. Do you have any idea of when we'll be able to get back-up here? With how sick these people are, I honestly think having enough people on their feet and capable of running things in a week would take a miracle."

"Back-up, that's going to be a problem." Fury said after a moment's pause. Coulson wasn't going to like this. He didn't like this.

"Why? Have any other bases been hit with this?"

"We've got a few isolated cases at the Treehouse and the Fridge. Right now it looks like the majority of the effected batch of shots was distributed at the Hub, but there's a second issue. At least two more batches of the shots this company sold are believed to be defective and provide no protection from the flu."

"And we got shots from those batches." Fury didn't even have to say it. And until they figured out which agents had been left vulnerable and provided them with protection, back-up wasn't coming.

"Medical's saying at least a week to sort it out." Fury told him. "Can you update Victoria with what we know so far? If she isn't sleeping?"

"This is because I died once already, isn't it? Did you possibly negotiate a permanent "Get out of Death Free" card, because if so, I'd like to know about it." And he would probably need it if he was going to have to face a sick and sleepy Victoria and let her know that she had the flu due to a defective shot and the team that was driving her slowly insane was going to be playing nursemaid to her and her staff for the next few weeks. Before he could say anything else, there was suddenly a loud banging. What in the world?

"AC? May? Someone? Help!" Skye shouted. It had taken her so long, she was really afraid that it might have taken too long, to squirm down the vent, but thank goodness, she could finally hear something that she hoped was her team.

"Skye?" Coulson looked around, forgetting the phone in his hand as he tried to figure out where the voice was coming from. It sounded like it was coming from the wall. How could they be hearing Skye from inside a wall? "Where are you?" May was looking around too, trying to pinpoint the noise, and Ward was looking around in puzzlement as well as he hurried down another hall to join them.

"The wall. At least I think I'm in the wall. It should be the wall, anyway." Skye called as she banged again. "There's a vent opening, maybe two or three inches long, about a foot in front of me, if that helps. "AC, we've got a major problem!" She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to picture the distance she had came, trying to figure out how to lead them to Fitzsimmons and Agent Hand. If she messed it up…. As sick as she was, Agent Hand didn't have the time that might be lost by them wandering around multiple levels trying to locate the lab they were trapped in. "Thirty feet. That's three levels, right? Down about thirty feet and…" Skye jumped as something smacked into the opening she could see in front of her, tearing out a section of the wall.

"How did you get in there?" Coulson muttered as another hit from the sledgehammer May had somehow found in what seemed like five seconds knocked away more of the wall. He knelt and looked in, totally shocked. Skye was small, but how had se managed to fit in that space? It didn't look like she would even have enough room to breathe. "Hold on. We'll have you out in a minute." And he would have to think up something to tell Victoria to explain why there was a fresh hole in one of her walls.

"AC, don't worry about me! You need to get downstairs NOW!" But the hammer slammed into the wall again and again, blocking out her words. Skye closed her eyes, tears starting to burn as she imagined what the delay that freeing her could mean for Agent Hand.

But faster than expected, there were hands reaching in and tugging at her, and then she was popping free of the vent, coughing from the dust.

"Skye, are you alright?" Ward asked.

"What were you doing in that wall?" Coulson added, not even noticing the phone that he was still holding, and the director's voice demanding to know why he was hearing a sledgehammer.

"Going for help." Skye forced herself to breathe deeply, to stop coughing so she could make them understand her. "Agent Hand, she was trying to lock down the labs. She must have realized they were still unsecured after she locked down the computers, because she had to do it manually. Something's wrong in this lab someone turned into a storeroom down on the lowest level, or I think it's the lowest level. The door malfunctioned and she got locked in." And who knows how long she had been in there before they found her? "She was on my list, but I put off looking in on her until last and then we couldn't find her. Fitzsimmons helped me look and then we all ended up locked in too when we found her. We need to get down there now and get them out. She's sick, she's really, really sick."

"How bad? One of you go and get a stretcher." Coulson ordered. "Skye?"

"IVs, too, and cooling blankets." Hadn't Jemma mentioned cooling blankets back on the BUS what felt like a lifetime ago? That sounded like something that might help didn't it? "It's really, really bad. Jemma gave her medicine, but her temperature kept going up instead of coming down. She's dehydrated and it was making her sick trying to drink anything. Jemma thought she was about to have a seizure right before I left. Her temperature had hit 106.2. She said if that happened, she would either die or be brain damaged."

Coulson paled, and the phone slipped from his fingers. "Dying? Jemma said she was…."

"Without help, pretty much, yes. She didn't have any more medicine or equipment to do anything else for her." Skye whispered as they hurried towards the nearest elevator, May and Ward behind them with a stretcher that had almost appeared out of nowhere. Did Shield teach their specialists superspeed or something? But she would think about that later. Just please let them be in time now.

"Sir, did I just hear what I thought I heard?" Maria Hill asked, having come in just in time to hear the last of what Coulson had said. "She's…. It's the flu. They haven't even been sick a day, and Victoria's dying from it?" Surely she had misheard, or maybe Coulson's hacker had been confused.

"Get someone from medical up here now!" Not that they could do much, but if he was about to loose a good level 8 agent, he wanted a very good explanation as to why, and heads were going to roll once he found out who was to blame.


	11. Chapter 11

"Skye, was it this hot down here when you first came down?" Coulson asked as the elevator opened and they walked into what felt like an oven.

Skye nodded. "Something's malfunctioning, I guess. We didn't know what. They're down this way!" She hurried down the hallway as fast as she could, silently sending up prayers as she went. Please, please don't let them be too late. Agent Hand was fighting so hard, don't let them be too late to help her!

"This hot, I wouldn't be surprised if she hasn't had a heatstroke on top of the fever." May and Coulson exchanged worried looks. Heatstroke combined with the fever from the infection, even if Victoria was somehow still alive, what potential damage could have been done to her brain?

"Jemma? Fitz? I've got help!" Skye called as she pushed the door of the lab open and grabbed a box to catch it before it could shut on her. She was almost afraid to look at where Agent Hand had been resting, afraid of what she might find, but after a second she forced herself to and sighed with relief. It looked like the two scientists had ended up pouring buckets of water over her, and she didn't know where Fitz had found giant feathers to make into a fan, but Jemma was smiling, and she could see that Agent Hand was still breathing, and it was all she could do to keep from hugging her again. Probably not the best idea at the moment, though. She would just have to hug her later. A few hugs would probably do her a world of good.

Coulson couldn't help but wince as he caught sight of Victoria on the floor. She just looked…. Small was the only word he could think of to describe her appearance, curled on her side and deathly pale. Small and very, very vulnerable, two words he never expected to associate with Victoria Hand. Could a fever somehow shrink someone? "How bad?"

"Her temperature's 106. She's tachycardiac, with severe dehydration." Jemma sighed as she saw the supplies on the gurney. "Bless you!" IVs and cooling blankets, exactly what they needed. "Can someone hand me one of the IV setups please? And spread out one of the blankets so we can get them under and over her." Even if she didn't have medicines to give her until they got upstairs, forcing fluids intravenously would be a major help and so would the cooling blankets. 'Here we go, ma'am. Just a little stick and you'll be feeling much better in a few minutes."

It sounded like a hive of bees buzzing around her. Victoria struggled, trying to open her eyes, as she felt a pinch and then a sting in her right arm, but they wouldn't budge, her lashes just fluttering uselessly.

"Victoria?" Coulson and May both knelt by her. It looked like she was trying to open her eyes but couldn't. How bad a sign was that? "Jemma, can she hear us?" Coulson asked her.

"I'm not sure how much she can hear, but touch, she still seems to be able to feel people touching her. That's a good sign. Be very, very gentle when you lift her." Even with her temperature starting to drop a bit, she was still in serious danger of suffering a seizure, and until she had the drugs on hand to prevent that, Jemma was going to be extra cautious with handling her. Three on one side, three on the other, they got her lifted onto the lowered stretcher with the second cooling blanket tucked on top of her, and the IV bag secured to a pole attached to the side.

"We're going to have to clear out a space in medical for her." Coulson murmured. "May, can…."

"No, medical's not a good idea." Jemma told them as they hurried the stretcher down the hall to the elevator. "Her office will be better. I can set up the equipment I need there, and right now she doesn't need the exposure to the germs in medical. She's pretty much used every bit of strength she has fighting this. She's going to be extremely vulnerable to a secondary infection like pneumonia. We need to isolate her to hopefully prevent that."

Pneumonia. He didn't bother to ask. He knew that would happen if that set in. Coulson reached out and gently stroked Victoria's fingers, hoping Jemma was right, that she could still feel something, and would know somehow that they were trying to save her. And he hoped that Jemma was right too, and that keeping her isolated might prevent the infection that would likely be deadly if it set in.


	12. Chapter 12

By the time they reached Agent Hand's office, Jemma had at least the beginnings of an idea for how to treat her. She wasn't sure it was the best plan, the best plan would involve getting Agent Hand to a hospital for a stay in intensive care, but that was out, so this was what she could come up with. Hopefully it would be enough to give her a fighting chance.

"Looks like she made a pretty comfy bed for herself, anyway. Probably way more comfortable than the beds in medical would be." Skye commented as they eased Agent Hand onto the makeshift bed on the floor, the cooling blankets swaddled around her.

Victoria felt hands touching her again, felt herself being lifted and they laid down somewhere soft, some sort of blankets being tucked securely around her, and more hands, the touches gentle, but why couldn't she open her eyes to see who was there? It was all black, except the flickers of light she was somehow seeing through her closed eyelids. What was wrong with her?

"Jemma?" Coulson quietly said her name as he watched Victoria. Something…. He wanted to believe that they had found her in time, that they would be able to help her and reverse this, but seeing her there, looking so vulnerable and so absolutely small… How could someone who was six feet tall look so small but she looked almost tiny, wrapped in those blankets, pale and ill.

"She's still fighting, Sir, she's still got a chance." Jemma hoped that the next part wasn't going to be awkward, but she really needed to limit the number of people Agent Hand was exposed to, and having their entire team crammed into her office wasn't going to be good for that. But she wasn't an actual medical doctor. Was she allowed to throw superior officers out? It looked like she was about to find out. "Right now, though, I need you and Agent May and Agent Ward to wait out in the hall, please. And…" She paused, anticipating another awkward moment. She was going to need someone else to help her, but she wasn't sure if she should ask for Skye or Fitz. Both had been with Agent Hand for long enough that any germs they were carrying she would have been exposed to, making them the only safe choices but….

"I'll stay." Skye said before Jemma could say anything else. "She's on my list. My job to look after her, right?" She dropped to the ground next to Agent Hand and reached out to gently pat her fingers. "Besides, Fitz probably needs to check and make sure that whoever messed things up in that lab hasn't messed anything else up, something that might set the building on fire, right? She isn't so scary. I want to stay and help."

"Jemma, wait." Coulson said as the scientist started to shoo them out the door. "Don't you need more than one person?" And had Skye actually said that Victoria wasn't that scary? That wasn't a good sign. If Victoria wasn't being considered scary, she was either on her deathbed, or Skye had been more than a bit squashed and oxygen deprived in that vent.

"Sir, we need to limit her exposure to any possible germs at the moment. She's been confined in the same room as the two of us and Fitz. Anything we might be carrying, she's already been exposed to, but the three of you could easily be carrying something different that could be dangerous to her at the moment. We'll take care of her, I promise." Jemma grabbed a piece of paper and quickly wrote out a list of the supplies they would need. "The medicines can come from medical. That should be alright, but get the equipment and the rest of the supplies from the BUS, please. Just knock and leave it outside the door. Oh, and we need something dry to change her into too."

"She's not going to be happy waking up in a hospital gown." But May almost smiled as she saw the expressions on Ward and Coulson's face, when they realized that even as she was writing and handing over lists, little Jemma had somehow managed to shoo them out of the door, and had closed it firmly behind her.

"No, she isn't." Coulson took the list of equipment hand handed it to Fitz. "Take Ward and get whatever Jemma needs. May and I will handle getting the medicines." Fitz and Ward hurried off right away, but the two senior agents stood there, staring at the closed door, reluctant to move.

"She's fighting. She's still fighting. Simmons will take care of her, she'll be fine." May said. speaking partially to Coulson and partially to herself.

"Right." Coulson nodded and the two started down the hallway, although both shot looks behind them at the closed door.

"Someone should probably call the director, though, and update him. Weren't you talking to him when this started? Where's your phone?"

"I think I dropped it. I'll have to go and find it later." And really, until they knew more, what use would it be to call Fury when they couldn't tell him anything?

"Doctor, let's stick to simple yes or no answers, shall we?" Director Fury said in the quietest and most alarming tone the trembling physician in front of him had ever heard. "The entire staff of the Hub has been sick less than a day, but not more than twenty minutes ago I heard something very alarming on the phone, that Agent Hand, one of my level 8 senior agents might be dying of this thing. Is that possible?"

The doctor shook, but finally he stammered a reply. "Yes."

"Maria?" Jasper Sitwell whispered as he approached the deputy director who was standing in the doorway to block the doctor in case he tried to bolt. "What's going on? Did he just say what I thought he said? Victoria's dying? What happened to her?"

"The flu, apparently."

"The flu? I heard there was some sort of problem with the shots, but…" Dying? He pulled out his phone and quickly dialed Felix at the Sandbox. "Felix, we've got a major problem here."

"Alright, Doctor, would you explain to me how this is possible, for a healthy person to end up on their deathbed less than twenty-four hours after symptoms develop?" Fury demanded, ignoring the rapidly increasing voices from the doorway, where it sounded like Sitwell was turning his phone onto speaker.

"Being healthy might actually go against her, if Agent Hand is as sick as you heard." The doctor said, hoping that Fury didn't have any weapons or if he did, that he didn't believe in shooting the messenger. It wasn't like HE was the one who had ordered the defective shots! "Generally, the relatively young, healthy people are better able to fight off the flu, but if Agent Hand is that sick…. We might be looking at something like the pandemic of 1918, where the virus pretty much turned the immune system against those who were healthy in a cytokine storm."

"So, what do we do, then?" Fury demanded. Surely there was some sort of treatment for this sort of thing.

"There are a few drugs that have showed possible benefits, but by the time that we could get them there, if Agent Hand is as bad as you heard…."

"You don't think she's going to make it?"

"If she's that bad…" He didn't want to say it, with the way Fury was glaring at him but what choice did he have. "No, I don't think she has a chance, not if she's that sick, that fast. And Director, I hate to say this, but if the virus is bad enough to trigger a cytokine storm in the body, Agent Hand might only be the first agent we're going to lose."

Fury closed his eye for a moment and lowered his head. A funeral, how he did hate having to go to funerals. "Maria?" He called a moment later as he looked up at his deputy director, who was standing there, a shocked expression on her face next to a horrified looking Sitwell, who had someone who was shouting on his phone. "Put Shield into total lockdown and notify the WSC that we have a major problem on our hands. Until we find out more about what this is, no one goes in or out of any Shield installation."


	13. Chapter 13

Jemma sighed in relief when she heard the knock at the door. Agent Hand was looking a bit better with the fluids from the IV and the cooling blankets, but it would be a relief to get some actual medication into her, and to hopefully make her more comfortable, and to try to ward off the risk of seizures until they had that fever under control.

"Why did you have them bring that?" Skye looked up at the sound of Jemma opening the door, and her eyes went wide when she saw some of the equipment she was dragging in. EKG monitor, and a couple of other monitoring items that she recognized but wasn't sure of the names for. Those weren't too alarming, but the portable defibrillator from the BUS, that was super scary. Did Jemma think… Cardiac arrest, shouldn't they be getting her to medical, no matter the risk of germ exposure? Or better yet, to a hospital and intensive care with a ton of doctors to hover and tend her?

"It's just a precaution. She's responding. I'm sure she'll be fine but I just want to have it on hand to be on the safe side." Jemma told her. But better to put it out of sight somewhere, though. If seeing it had alarmed Skye, she didn't want to think of how Agent Hand might react if she opened her eyes and caught sight of that particular equipment. She tucked it behind the desk and drug the rest of the supplies in, medicines, more IV fluids, it looked like everything was there, even a hospital gown to replace Agent Hand's wet clothes with. Perfect.

Skye stole another frightened look as Jemma drug the defibrillator out of sight, but then she forced herself to look away. Surely if Jemma thought that there was a serious danger of cardiac arrest she would be freaking and insisting on more help, no matter what the director or anyone said. "What do you need me to do?"

"Just talk to her, make sure she knows that someone's with her until I get the medicines in, and then we'll have to get her into the gown." And the only practical way she could see for doing that would be to cut her clothes free. Jemma really hoped that Agent Hand hadn't picked today to wear her best outfit to work. She moved the IV fluids from the pole attached to the stretcher to a portable pole as she worked. That would give them more room, anyway. "Ma'am, I'm going to go ahead and start you on antibiotics as a precaution, and then a low dose of midazolam. That's going to make you a little groggy. Don't try to fight it, alright? Sleep's the best thing for you, right now." And hopefully if there was something going on that might lead to a seizure, the medicine and sleep would help, and would give them time to get the fever under control before damage could be done.

Bees. It still sounded like a hive of bees was buzzing around her, but Victoria did catch the word sleep. Sleep, one part of her was afraid to sleep. Something was wrong, something was seriously wrong, she could feel it, and if she let go, and let herself drift off, she was terrified she wouldn't wake up again. But sleep, letting the pain and confusion go, it was so tempting, and she could feel something racing up her arm, pulling her down, and all she wanted to do was to let go and let herself drift off. She tried to fight none the less, the fear of letting go, of not waking up, of… "No, please." She whispered, even though the words sounded funny in her ears and she wasn't sure that whoever was there would understand them. Sleep, sleep would lead to death, her foggy, feverish mind was screaming, and she had to make the people who were touching her understand. "No. Please, no."

'Hey, it's okay. Jemma isn't going to give you anything that would hurt you." Skye said as the two shared a worried look. What damage could Agent Hand do if she tried to fight the drug or them? But how were they going to convince her it was okay, if it seemed like she couldn't even hear them? Skye reached out and took her hand, and started to stroke her hair, hoping that the touch might calm her slightly.

"Ma'am, it's okay. It's a low dose, I promise, and I have the drug to reverse it right here. If it looks like you're going to far under, I can bring you out of it in a minute. We're not going to let anything happen to you, I promise. Just rest. Please, you try to rest. That's what you need right now, to rest and get your strength back."

Whatever they had given her, Victoria couldn't fight it, and she felt herself drifting off against her will. "Please." she whispered again as the fog took her, and pulled her under. "Please."

"Jemma?"

"It's a low dose, I promise, and I can reverse it if by some chance she starts to react badly." Jemma felt tears in her eyes even though she knew she was doing the right thing, giving Agent Hand something to make her sleep. She had sounded so afraid. But before she could think about and worry more, there was a knock on the door.

"How is she?" Coulson and the others stood well back as Jemma eased the door open a bit. Did that look like a tear slipping down her cheek? Not good, that couldn't be good.

"Sleeping. Here, we could use the space this is taking up." Jemma said as she pushed the stretcher out into the hall.

"Is there anything else you need?" Coulson asked.

"Someone needs to look in on the agents Skye and I were supposed to tend to. That's the best thing you can do right now, tending the others and letting us tend to Agent Hand."

Tending the others. Other people, some who should probably be on IVs. "I know how to patch a bullet wound. May, Ward, do either of you…"

"We can call my mother." May said. "I think she's done it or seen it done before." And at least a call to her mother would provide a distraction from what might be happening behind that door. "And at some point, shouldn't someone call Director Fury with an update?"

"I will, as soon as I know something more to update him with." Coulson replied. "Let's just worry about checking on the rest of the agents, and phoning your mother for now. Fury can wait." And why make someone else worry? He felt like he was doing enough worry for ten people.

"I've got the lockdown complete, Sir." Maria said as she came back into the director's office to find him confronting a different doctor. "Have you heard from Coulson?"

"Nothing." Fury shook his head. "Doctor, are you agreeing with your colleague, there's nothing that can be done?"

"Without seeing Agent Hand, we can't be 100 percent sure, but…." Was that a gun on the Director's desk? Please don't let him shoot the messenger! He hadn't arranged for the defective shots either! "Fever over 106, with how fast she got sick, the only thing I can think of is that it's a cytokine storm."

"But there are possible drugs for that, right?" Maria asked. "Couldn't we contact them and tell them what to start? Put her on life support until they can kick in?"

"The drugs aren't the sort of things they would have available in medical, and by the time that we could get medicines there…." The doctor closed his eyes, not wanting to think of what he was picturing. "Less than 24 hours, the mortality rate could hit fifty percent. Agent Hand, I don't see a chance for her, or for a number of the other agents. As for life support, is anyone on Agent Coulson's team capable of initiating that? Isn't the person with the most training just a bio-chemist?"

Fury shook his head. 50 percent mortality and if Victoria wasn't already dead, she was well on her way to it. And there wasn't a thing he could do. Not a thing but… "Hill, get Rogers up here. Hopefully with that formula he's got running through him, he's safe from this thing. I need someone out there to look into why this happened and make sure that it was an accident and not an attack. If we're loosing a good level 8 agent along with possibly 150 others, I want to know why and who's to blame!"

"Maria?" Jasper was in the the hall, listening at the director's door when she walked out, phone in hand, with Felix's voice coming from it and what sounded like an additional voice coming from another phone on Felix's end. "Is Victoria actually dying?"

"Or already dead if what the director heard and what the doctors are saying is right. I've got to go find Captain Rogers. Hopefully we can investigate this and stop it before anyone else ends up on their death bed."


	14. Chapter 14

"Do you think whoever came up with the design for hospital gowns hated sick people?" Skye said as she looked critically at the gown they had changed Agent Hand into. It fit, it went below her knees and somehow they were actually able to tie the back so there weren't the usual extremely awkward gaps but still… Take away the clothes, take away the glasses finally so they wouldn't get broken, the water they had bathed her face in had removed her lipstick and other makeup, Jemma had even removed the polish on her nails before hooking her to the monitors to better track her oxygen levels. Take away all of that and then add the gown, those cooling blankets and the equipment she was attached to, and Agent Hand looked frighteningly vulnerable and small. Was there some sort of virus that could actually make you shrink because she could swear Agent Hand had lost a few inches somehow. But surely a fever couldn't really make a person shrink. Agent Hand would have to have all of her clothes altered and that would be really annoying for her. No, Skye shook her head, pushing away those thoughts. Definitely nutty, and she didn't need to let her mind wander to nutty areas right now. "Is the fever down any more?' She asked as she heard the thermometer beep.

"105.5." Jemma frowned slightly. She wouldn't feel completely safe until they had Agent Hand's temperature down to something under 103. But it was coming down, she forced herself to remember, it might be slow, but it was coming down.

"How high did it hit before we got there?" Skye asked.

"106.7."

"So, it's down over a degree in what, maybe 40 minutes or an hour? That's a good sign right?"

"It's the best sort of sign. I'm going to wait a bit longer and see try to give her something through the IV that might help bring it down faster, though." Jemma smiled slightly as she looked over Agent Hand and then checked the readings on the monitors. She was still tachycardiac, but that probably wouldn't resolve until they got the fever down to something much closer to normal body temperature. Her O2 saturation levels were good, and it looked like the midazolam was doing what she had hoped, relaxing her enough for a natural and hopefully healing sleep.

"So, what do we do until you can give her something else?" Skye asked just as somewhere below there was a loud boom that made the room shake, and the lights flicker and then cut out for a moment before coming back on alarmingly dim.

"What was that?" Jemma asked as she looked at Skye. "That sounded like an explosion!"

"I think that was an explosion." Skye whispered. Something had blown up? Was the building under attack? And if it was, what in the world were they going to do? Agent Hand was just starting to stabilize. Being in the middle of a new disaster…. They were supposed to be taking care of her, not getting into a new disaster!

"Explosion. Smoke. Block the bottom of the door." Jemma forced herself to think, to recall her fire safety lessons from when she was a small girl. Of course once she had met up with Fitz, those lessons had changed to why they shouldn't cause fires trying to do experiments, but… "We can't let smoke get in here." If it did, the damage it could do, it would trigger pneumonia for sure.

"Right." Skye grabbed a spare blanket and stuffed it around the bottom of the door. And then she grabbed the edge of a small table and started to drag it in front of the door to secure it.

"You don't think…" Could they be under attack? Jemma had failed all of her field tests, but she reached out and picked up the pair of scissors they had used to cut Agent Hand's clothes away. If they were being attacked, she wanted something to at least try to defend the sick, sleeping agent.

"I hope not, but I'm going to make sure that no one can get in here until AC lets us know it's safe. Jemma, that medicine you gave Agent Hand, if it's safe, you might want to give her a little more. She doesn't need to wake up in the middle of this." Her waking up in the middle of this, that would be a disaster for sure. Jemma had been worried about a seizure being triggered. Well, this seemed like what would trigger one if anything did. "Come on, AC. Please, please take care of this and come to tell us it's safe." She whispered as she got the table in front of the door and looked around, trying to find anything else that might be useful to protect them. What had happened downstairs?


	15. Chapter 15

"Yes, we appreciate your help." May said into her phone as she and Coulson headed down the hallway to check on more of the people on their lists and on the division of Skye and Simmons" lists. "No, I don't need you to send anyone. The situation is under control and…"

Just then there was a loud booming noise from deeper in the building. May and Coulson looked at each other, knowing all too well what the sound was, an explosion. "I'll call you right back."

"An attack?" she asked as they headed in the direction they thought the explosion was coming from. If someone knew that everyone in the building was sick except a handful of people, it would be the perfect time for an enemy to mount an attack. And if they were under attack… May was confident that even with just herself, Coulson and Ward they could mount an effective defense, but how could they manage that with the sick agents scattered through the building, and Victoria in critical condition, fighting for her life, upstairs?

"Communications." Part of Coulson felt relieved when he saw smoke pouring out of the main communications room. If someone was attacking and trying to breach the building, surely they would go for the doors or an exterior wall, but he wasn't about to let his guard down as they reached the doorway just as Ward staggered out, dragging two techs on either side of him. "What happened?" He demanded to know.

"I don't know." Ward said as he eased the techs, who now had painful coughing to deal with on top of the shivering and achinging of the flu down onto the floor. "We were checking them, and a bottle of water got knocked over and…. Wait, where's Fitz?" He looked around as he realized that the engineer hadn't followed him out of the room. "Is he still in there?" He turned, and started to head back in, only for Fitz to come staggering out, coughing as he come, wires clutched in his fist.

"Fitz, what were you doing in there?" Coulson demanded as he looked around the other man. The smoke was too thick to really see anything in the communications room, but at least he didn't see leaping flames. Hopefully that was a good sign. "Is anyone else in there?"

"Just the two." Fitz said as he waved at the coughing techs and then had to stop and cough himself before he held out the wires. "Got a fire extinguisher and pulled these before they got too damaged. It looks like the same work that there was down in the lab." And not only did it look like the wires had been damaged either when they were removed from where they had been located originally, or when they were put into the communications room, but it looked like they were in poor condition to start with. "Agent Hand is going to kill whoever did this when she's feeling better." And his pride in engineering and good work made him want to have more than a few words with whoever was responsible too.

"Wait, this was an accident?" Coulson asked.

An accident? Was Coulson thinking sabotage? Fitz's brow furrowed as he considered it. "I don't know. If I knew who worked on that panel last I might be able to make a better guess."

"Edwin Tuttle." One of the communications techs said between coughs. "Level 4 maintenance tech. Always looking for a way to level 5, letting everyone know how fast he works, how he keeps maintenance costs down." The man shivered as he slid down the wall, his head foggy with fever and now with smoke. "Where's Agent Hand?" Shouldn't she be here with the other agents, demanding answers to why her communications room had just suffered an explosion?

"Agent Hand is resting right now." Coulson said. "We're filling in for her until she feels better. Ward, can you take these two down the hall and away from the smoke? Fitz, can you take another look, see if you can be sure if this isn't some attempt at sabotage?"

"Clear the smoke a little and…. Wait, we need to vent the smoke! Smoke rises!" And even with the small fire that the short had triggered out, more smoke was still pouring out of the room. If even a bit of that made it upstairs to Agent Hand's office….

Coulson nodded. Smoke inhalation was definitely not what Victoria needed to be facing at the moment. As sick as she was, it would trigger pneumonia for sure. "Fans?"

"Fans and an open window might do it. Do the windows even open here?" It wouldn't be very sophisticated, but it would be fast, and that's what they needed.

"I'll get a window open somehow." May said, and hopefully opening the window wouldn't require too much breakage or possible structural damage.

"And I'll get fans." Coulson said. He was suddenly very glad he had dropped his phone somewhere. He wasn't looking foreword to calling Fury to report to him about this.

"Agent Hill?" Steve Rogers asked as he followed the Deputy Director down the hall. "Could I ask what's going on?" He had been about to leave to visit some of the sights to try to catch up a bit more when the lockdown announcement was made.

"I think the director better explain that."

Fury was on the phone as they entered, and he waved at them to wait. He had finally got through to medical at the Fridge. Hopefully they would have better news for him than the medical staff here. "Doctor, you have three cases of this on your hands. I've told you about the situation at the Hub. What's your opinion?"

The doctor on the other end of the phone was glad the the Fridge was located far away from the director, but with what he had to say, he wasn't sure it would be far enough. "We have three cases, but those three cases were already in medical, with minor burns from contact with an 084. I can tell you that we've found temperatures of 105 in all three of them."

"But this cytokine storm that medical here is talking about, no signs of that?" Fury demanded.

"Not yet, but their immune systems were already slightly low. It might have provided a degree of protection to them. But someone without any compromise, what were the symptoms you reported again?"

"Fever of 106.2, and something about possible seizures." Fury said, suddenly remembering the last part. Seizures and the fever, what sort of damage could that do to the brain?

The doctor winced at the mention of seizures, although he supposed it would be better to go from one of those, than from having your lungs fill with fluid from pneumonia. At least a seizure and triggered respiratory arrest would be quick. "I can't be 100 percent sure, not without seeing Agent Hand or the other agents, but…. I wouldn't question your medical staff's diagnosis." And that worried him seriously for the safety of the patients he already had, and the potential for more illness if there were more problems with the defective shots.

"Treatment options? Can you give me something there, then?" Fury demanded.

"Under 24 hours from symptoms developing to the condition you reported for Agent Hand, there's nothing we could get to them in time."

"Life support isn't an option?" Not that he was sure of how he would contact Coulson and the other agents. Coulson's phone kept going to voice mail and May's kept showing busy but if someone could give him an option to save those people, he would find a way.

"If there are milder cases, and there's someone there who knows how to initiate it, it might be some help. But as for Agent Hand, honestly with what you're reporting, even if they could put her on the machines, all it would do would be delay the end. And if she did suffer a seizure, she could very well be already brain damaged or brain dead."

"Sir?" Steve looked at Fury with concern as he abruptly ended the phone call. "What's going on?"

"What's going on is that we're in the middle of a flu epidemic, and I might be having to plan a funeral for one of my level 8 senior agents. We were provided with defective shots that have managed to take out one of our bases better than any enemy could do. You're about the only one who might be safe to investigate this. Head to the company that provided the vaccines, see what you can find out. I want to know if this was an accident, or not."

The flu. Steve winced a bit. His mother had lost two sisters to the flu back in 1918, and he knew how bad a way it was to go. "Right away. And sir, I'm very sorry about your agent."

Jasper came in, envelope in hand, and stopped Steve as he was going out, and after a few words, money was exchanged.

"Sitwell, what was that about?" Fury demanded as soon as Rogers was gone.

"We're taking up a collection for flowers for Victoria's funeral." Jasper said If as many people were affected by this as they were afraid of, she could easily get lost in the crowd, and he and Felix didn't want that. They could arrange something nice for her before panic hit and people were reluctant to contribute. "Felix is already sending a hundred. and I've got four hundred more already. What about the two of you?"

Funeral flowers. They were already planning to order funeral flowers? But…. Fury pulled out his wallet and tossed a couple of fifties to Sitwell, while Maria went through her pockets, and said she would find more in her office. Funerals. He was going to have to go to a lot of funerals very soon, he was afraid. How he hated going to funerals.


	16. Chapter 16

"Fitz, how does it look?" Coulson asked as he entered the communications run. At least the smoke had cleared and the fans they had rigged up had vented it out a window before it could get upstairs. Finally, something was going right.

"It's hard to be 100 percent sure with the fire. It damaged a lot, but between the wires I pulled, and what I'm seeing here…." Fitz called as he squirmed out from under a panel. "I'm about 90 percent sure we're looking at pure stupidity, not sabotage. I am 100 percent sure that it wasn't an explosive. I can tell you that now."

"Not an explosive. That's good. So, what is wrong with it?" Coulson asked. At least he wasn't going to have to explain an explosive device in her building to Victoria. He didn't even want to think of how he would tell her if a bomb had gone off while she was sleeping and he was in charge.

"It looks like instead of ordering new parts, to replace damaged things, the idiot has been pulling the parts from other areas of the building, probably places like the lab downstairs that aren't used too much. The problem is that he has no clue what he's doing. He's damaging things, either when he takes them out, or puts them in, which isn't good, especially since it looks like the things he's pulling are already showing signs of strain." Did this man have no pride in his work? Every engineering instinct Fitz had was offended by such sloppiness. Okay, had had done things and created explosions before, but that had been from trying new things, not taking shortcuts that weren't called for with run of the mill repair work. "Sir, I need to access the computers to try to pull up the repair schedules, to make sure we have the right tech, and to see what other little non standard repairs he's made. If it's bad enough that a bottle of water triggered a small explosion and fire, I hate to think what might go wrong somewhere else."

More explosions. Definitely what they didn't need. And more smoke…. "I'll undo the lockdown on one of the computers for you. Do whatever you have to do to fix this. What about communications? How bad's the damage there?"

"The main communications array is out. I can fix it but it's going to take some time. Until then, communications in and out are going to be via cell phone only, or possibly from the BUS." And where was his cell phone? Fitz looked around, but didn't see it, and he was sure that he had dropped it in here. Not that it really mattered. No one besides Jemma and his mother ever called him on that phone anyway. He could look for it later.

"With the Hub shut down, communications isn't a priority, anything that might endanger the safety of the agents immons?"or the structural integrity of the building is." Coulson finally found a computer that he could get on, and entered the code to unlock it, then pulled up the schedule for maintenance performed by Edwin Tuttle. And hadn't he been a busy, and likely negligent little beaver? At least it didn't look like he had ever done maintenance in Victoria's office. That would have been a disaster. "Here. Get Ward to help you go over all of this." Coulson said as he sent the record to print and locked down the computer again. "May and I will handle the rest of the sick agents was a until you're done."

"You're sure? There are three hundred of them, and this is going to take awhile, just looking over everything, never mind trying to fix anything that needs repairing."

"We'll manage. Ward, you're helping Fitz." Coulson called as they exited communications room. "May…"

"Manage the other agents." May said as she took the list of agents who needed to be checked from the other two. "Those two techs are still coughing. We probably need to talk to Simmons and get a suggestion for medicine to give them."

Coulson nodded, and the two started for the elevator, before remembering the current maintenance issues, and opting for the stairs instead.

"Skye, Simmons?" He called as he knocked on Victoria's office door a few minutes later.

"Thank goodness! What's going on?" Skye sit the bottle of liquor she had been holding like a baseball bat down, but she wasn't ready to move the table blocking the door yet. "AC, we heard something that sounded like an explosion. What happened?"

"Problem in communications. There was a small fire, and a lot of smoke. How's Victoria?"

"Sleeping. Jemma gave her something to help her rest. A fire?"

"It's out and Fitz and Ward are working on fixing the cause. Can Jemma give us a hand, though? We've got two techs with smoke inhalation that we need suggestions for."

"Smoke inhalation?" Jemma almost moaned as she stood and motioned for Skye to take her place sitting by Agent Hand. Smoke inhalation, not good under the circumstances. "What sort of fever did they have before this?" she called as she hurried to the door, paper and pen in hand.

May handed him one of the papers with the techs names marked. "101.4 and 102."

"Okay. That's good. That's one thing that's good." Jemma said with a sigh. She would really prefer to be able to examine the techs for herself, but hopefully she could instruct Agent Coulson and Agent May in what to do and that would be good enough. Agent Hand was still much to sick to leave with just Skye to tend her. "They're going to need antibiotics as a precaution, though. Oral would work, but at least one dose IV or injection would be better." She wrote the name of the best drug and the dosing instructions and passed it under the door. "And inhalation treatments. Best they have those as well." She wrote out another drug name and more instructions and slid that paper under as well. "They're going to need to be checked, at least every thirty minutes for the next four to six hours, and then every hour for the next twenty-four."

"We'll manage. How is Victoria?" Coulson asked again. What Skye had said sounded good, but he would like a few more details to ease his mind.

"Temperature's down to 105, and she's sleeping. She's still tachycardiac, but all of her other vitals look good so far."

"Finally something that's going right. Just take care of her. We'll handle everything else." he said before he and May turned to head downstairs. "Have you ever done inhalation treatments?" he asked her as the opened the stairwell door.

"I'll call my mother. At least her agency has a medical department not overwhelmed with the flu."


	17. Chapter 17

"Melinda, what in the world is wrong with your organization?" her mother demanded as soon as the medical technician finished giving May and Coulson instructions on the necessary treatments for the two coughing techs.

"We're having a problem with the flu. I really appreciate your help."

"A problem with the flu? And Director Fury sent your team instead of doctors?" her mother said.

"We're the only agents who actually got flu shots that ought to be effective. We're the only ones he could have sent. And we do have someone with medical training, but right now she's tied up tending to Victoria."

"Victoria, I've heard a few rumors about her. How bad is it?"

"She's critical, which is why we've got to handle the other agents. I've got to go." May said as she spotted Fitz entering the room. "I'll call back later."

"Fitz?" Coulson asked as the two senior agents met him. He couldn't be finished checking the building already surely.

"I just wanted to see if Edwin Tuttle is on the list of sick agents in the building." Fitz said with a shake of his head. "Because I'm sure that Agent Hand's going to be wanting to have a few words with him when she's feeling better." Fitz shook his head again. He had already found so many improperly managed repairs. It was a wonder there hadn't been a fire before now. "So many fire hazards, and we've just gone through the first page of his assigned work so far. I thought I better update you and see what you want us to do about repairs once we've identified everything."

"Anything that looks like it's about to burst into flames, fix first. Anything anywhere near Victoria's office, fix yesterday. I trust your judgement about this." Coulson said. "How long do you think repairs will take?"

"I couldn't begin to guess. Days, probably." Fitz said. "If I just had a monkey. A monkey would be perfect for this."

"We gave you Ward to help." May said, not even wanting to think about the fact that she and Coulson might be on their own, tending 300 sick people for days. "Why do you need a monkey?"

"Ward's fine. He's going to be a big help. Especially with some of the larger damaged equipment. But a monkey could get into some of the tighter areas so easily. If I just had a monkey."

"Fitz, remind me of the monkey request when Agent Hand is feeling better." Coulson said. Victoria was probably the only one who would be capable of convincing accounting that a monkey was a necessary team expense, and then likely convincing the IRS that it counted for a business deduction. But if Fitz could prevent any more fires, when she was critically ill and fighting to live, Victoria just might be thrilled to do it.

Okay, the third time had not been the charm, but maybe the fourth time would be. Fury thought as the doctor at the Treehouse picked up the phone. "Doctor? You have patients who are down with this thing. You know about what's going on at the Hub. Give me some sort of option to deal with this."

"Director, I wish I had something that I could offer." the doctor said, fear obvious in his voice. "I have the two cases here in isolation with the highest infection protocols in place at the moment."

"Isolation and preventing the spread of this is fine, but how do we treat these people, that's what I want to know. How serious are the two cases you have?"

"Fevers of 104 at the moment. Director, I'm sorry, but I agree with the other doctors you've consulted. I wish I didn't, I wish I could offer you something more, but…"

"There are 300 sick people in the Hub, and Agent Hand happens to be one of my few level 8 senior agents. Are you telling me that all of those people are going to die?"

"Not all, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a 50 percent mortality rate given how fast they became ill and as for Agent Hand…" He paused, not wanting to say it but feeling like he had to. "A fever of over 106, it likely caused brain damage. Death would probably be a mercy for her after that. Do you know if she had a living will or advanced directives?" Perhaps that would simplify things.

"Thank you for your opinion, Doctor." Fury sighed as he heard a gasp from the door and looked up to see Sitwell, who looked ready to pass out from shock. Probably not a good idea to put calls like this on speaker, but it was too late to do anything about it now.

"Director, I do have one question. If we have casualties, what arrangements are you making for the bodies? Should we cremate them or…."

"I'll call you back about that. Thank you, Doctor."

"Cremation? You're not going to do that to Victoria, are you?" Sitwell grabbed the edge of the door in one hand, and barely held onto his phone where someone was shouting at the other end with the his free hand. Cremation? Victoria deserved better than that, a proper funeral and a chance to be mourned.

"Not unless I have a hundred people telling me it's necessary." Fury pulled up his contacts and then hit the number for the mortuary they had used to prepare their lost agents for either Shield arranged funerals or return to their families after New York. He probably ought to at least check with them and make sure they would be able to offer assistance if this turned out to be as bad as the doctors kept saying it might be.

"This is Director Nick Fury." He said as soon as someone answer the phone.

"Director Fury. I remember you." The funeral director cringed when he recognized the name. Not that Director Fury had been a difficult person to deal with, but a funeral attended by Tony Stark, he still had staff members recovering from that experience.

"I just wanted to give you warning, we have an incident going on here at Shield and we might have a number of bodies for you to process soon."

"Bodies? How many?"

"Maybe a 150 or more."

"And will we be seeing Mister Stark again? He was such a joy when we dealt with Agent Coulson."

"No, no Stark. Can you handle 150 bodies?" It would be a pain if he couldn't, having to clear another mortuary or rely on military resources to handle their dead.

The funeral director paused, wishing he could say no but his father and his grandfather had both worked with Shield, and he felt bound to continue the tradition. "The only issue I can see is having enough caskets on hand. For the top of the line models, there might be difficulties getting enough in. Have any of the deceased made pre-arrangements, or indicated what they wanted? I would hate to have something inappropriate as the only item on offer."

"There's some sort of back order for coffins?" Fury demanded.

"That many people, and top of the line caskets, there might be. If you're wanting something like what you got for Agent Coulson…. Why don't you click on our website? Perhaps that might give you some ideas for what you need."

"Is that a coffin?" Maria whispered to Sitwell as she came into the office just as Fury pulled up the page. They were looking at coffins? Had Coulson called with confirmation that Victoria was gone?

"Of course, if you just want a basic model, there's no problem there, but some of the top models, our woods…."

"She would want wood." Maria said without thinking.

"Mahogany looks nice." Sitwell added. "She would like mahogany."

Fury clicked and opened another page without real thought as his agents leaned over his shoulder, scanning the list of coffins available.

"Not that one." Sitwell rejected one immediately. "Too red. It would clash with her hair, don't you think?" He asked Maria.

"Probably.' How were they picking coffins and discussing clashing? This wasn't how she had expected to spend the day when she work up this morning. "Black maybe?" And black with the white lining just seemed to fit with Victoria's style.

Before Fury knew it, he was placing an order. He shook his head as he closed the computer browser. He absolutely could not stand funerals.


	18. Chapter 18

Jemma actually smiled when she checked the reading on the thermometer. 104.5. Still not the safest reading, but at least she thought it was a temperature where a seizure wasn't likely a serious danger.

"Jemma?" Skye gently touched Agent Hand's forehead, where beads of sweat were startling to pop up at her hairline. "Is that a bad sign or…"

"It's actually a good one. Sweating is one of the body's natural ways to try to cool itself and maintain a normal temperature. Reversing the dehydration is getting her body to start trying to function normally again. It's a very, very good sign." Not that the dehydration was completely reversed. It would take more than one bag of fluids to do that, but they were on their way. "Ma'am, I'm going to hang a fresh bag of fluids, but you're doing very well. You just try to rest, and you'll be better before you know it." It seemed like Agent Hand hadn't been able to really understand them before, but Jemma was going to keep talking to her anyway, in the hope that with the fever coming down she would be able to hear and realize that she was being taken care of.

"So, what else can we do for her?" Skye wet a washcloth that had been brought with the medical supplies and gently dabbed at Agent Hand's forehead. Sweating might be a good sign, but it made you feel horrible and sticky. That couldn't be good for the making her comfortable part of things.

"Just make her comfortable and try talking to her. Hopefully with the fever down a bit, she'll be able to understand now if she hears us." Jemma checked the monitors before settling in on Agent Hand's other side. Her heartrate was still faster than she would like, but other than that her vitals were good. As long as that stayed true, and as long as the fever kept dropping, she felt more and more certain they had a good chance of pulling her through.

"Any ideas for what to talk about? That won't terrify her, or make her think our team should be locked up somewhere?" Skye asked.

Jemma paused for a moment, and then she heard Fitz walking past the closed door, muttering under his breath about how he needed a monkey, and she had an idea for at least something to try talking about. "You've probably not been around Fitz enough to notice, Ma'am, but he has a bit of a monkey obsession. I think it all started when he fell into the monkey exhibit at the zoo when he was a child. I don't know what his teacher was thinking, but they didn't notice he was missing until his class got back to school. It took four zookeepers to keep him from taking a monkey with him when they finally found him and fetched him out. They won't even let him in the gates of most zoos now. Really, it's very embarrassing and since I'm with him, they look at me suspiciously too, like I might be planning to help him and smuggle a monkey out in my purse."

"I'm not sure that finding out our team might have a potential monkey-napper on it is a calming topic." Skye laughed slightly, as the image of Fitz, and various ways he could attempt to smuggle a monkey out of the zoo danced through her head and she had to choke back laughter as she saw him with a monkey stuffed down his sweater trying to walk past a zookeeper. "We might not be the most normal team out there, but we're going to take care of you. You're going to be fine."

"You're going to be just fine. We promise." Jemma added. "All you have to do now is to rest, and get well. Let us take care of everything else."

"Doctor." Fury said as the first doctor he had consulted answered his phone. Maybe this was insane to keep calling people, expecting a different answer to his questions, but somehow he couldn't stop himself. 300 people in the Hub and Victoria….

"Director, have you had any updates on the situation?"

"Nothing." And he was starting to get a bit worried that he couldn't reach Coulson. "I wanted to ask you, what damage could a fever of 106.2 do to the brain? A fever of 106.2 and potential seizures?"

"Agent Hand." The doctor was glad that he wasn't in the director's office for delivering this bit of news. "A fever that high the brain damage it could cause would be catastrophic. Normally the body doesn't allow a temperature much over 105. For her fever to be at that level…. Sir, I hate to say it, but with the damage that was likely done, death might be the more merciful option. Most likely, especially if there was a seizure, she would have suffered such massive damage that she would have been in a permanent vegetative state forever."

"Thank you, Doctor." Fury said, clicking off his phone and looking up to see Jasper in the doorway, dead white with shock. He really had to stop putting these calls on speaker before he gave that man a heart attack. He didn't need to loose two level 8 agents in one day.

Before he could say anything, his phone rang again, and Jasper scurried away, hopefully not to drop over with a coronary somewhere.

"Director, I'm at the pharmaceutical company's office." Steve said as soon as Fury answered. "They're nervous. I can tell you that much, but I'm not sure if it's because the shots they sold have put hundreds of people in the hospital and have made over a thousand sick or if they might be up to something. Director, I know you probably want to keep this quiet, to keep Shield's vulnerability right now from getting out, but I'd like to at least call Doctor Banner to get his opinion. He would be more likely to know if the stories they're trying to tell make sense."

"Call him. Do whatever you have to do to get to the bottom of this." Although calling Banner in would likely mean Stark would get involved too. "I just ordered a casket for one of my level 8 senior agents and got the happy news that she would have been a vegetable if she had lived. I want to know why!"

"Yes, sir. And again, I'm really sorry about your agent." Steve said as he ended the call started to dial Bruce Banner's number.

As soon as he found a private office, Jasper dialed Felix's number. "Felix?"

"Has Phil called yet with an update?" Felix asked as soon as he picked up the phone and switched it to speaker.

"No. Fury can't get hold of him, which makes me think the situation at the Hub has to be as bad as the doctors are saying it might be. Felix, Fury talked to the doctors here again about Victoria. They said with the fever she had, that the damage it likely did to her brain…."

"Catastrophic brain damage." Felix finished the sentence. "I talked to the doctors here, and they all agreed that even if by some miracle she had survived she would never have been normal again." And he had been really hoping for something different, for someone to have an idea with the strange things that they studied that might have made a difference.

"Wait. Wait. Catastrophic brain damage?" John Garrett's voice was tinny, coming from the other phone on Felix's desk. "They haven't seen her. How can they say that Vic would have catastrophic brain damage if they haven't seen her?"

"The fever. The human body normally doesn't have a temperature of over 105. For Victoria's temperature to have hit 106.2, something was seriously going wrong." Felix said as he shook his head even though neither of the other agents could see him. "The fever would have destroyed brain cells and essentially cooked her brain. Catastrophic and irreversible. Victoria didn't have a chance."

"But Phil hasn't called yet? He hasn't actually called and said she's gone?" Garrett demanded.

"Not yet, but…." Jasper didn't bother to finish the sentence. If the situation wasn't as bad as the doctors were saying, there wasn't a reason for them not to have heard from Phil. "I saw a nice tombstone on the webpage of the mortuary that's going to handle things. Black with white etching. Do you think she would like that? We probably ought to go ahead and order that too, before there's a rush."


	19. Chapter 19

12 hours. Coulson looked at the clock on the wall after checking the two techs once more. It had only been twelve hours since their arrival at the Hub. Honestly, it felt more like twelve days to him. Maybe the clocks were broken?

"Sir?" Fitz called as he came in. "We have another problem."

"Of course we have another problem." Coulson murmured under his breath. Because 300 sick people and a building that the fire inspectors would probably condemn if they checked it wasn't problem enough. But he had to deal with it. "What's wrong?"

"Ward and I just finished checking the work Tuttle did, and…." Fitz shook his head, not even sure of where to start on the disaster he had found. How had this man ever made it through the academy with such poor work skills, and as for his ethics, unless he was brain dead, he had to know he was endangering people by using worn and damaged parts. "I'm surprised Agent Hand hasn't had a fire before now."

"The damage is that bad?"

"I couldn't find a single thing that he actually fixed correctly." Fitz told him. "The repairs he made might hold for awhile, but then you're going to get disasters like what happened in communications."

"And we don't need a repeat of what happened in communications." Coulson said. "How long to fix things? Or at least to fix the things that are most likely to burst into flames?"

"Days, hopefully a day for the most critical repairs." Fitz said. "But we have a problem with the repairs. Tuttle was stripping parts from seldom used areas of the building instead of ordering new parts. I don't know if he was doing that so he could claim he had cut expenses for maintenance, or if he was saying he was ordering the parts and pocketing the money."

Tuttle might have tried to embezzle money from Shield right under Victoria's nose? Apparently the man was insane on top of his other problems if he thought he could get away with that with a former accountant in charge of things. But they could worry about that later. Currently Tuttle was collapsed with the flu, down in the cafeteria. He wouldn't be doing any embezzling or whatever he was plotting for a good long while. "We can deal with that later. What's the problem with the repairs?"Fitz, why

"The problem is that a lot of the parts that need replaced haven't been purchased. I've taken stock of what's on hand, and what we have on the BUS and I can fix roughly half of the damages he's caused with what I have on hand."

"So we'll have half as many fires, then?" May said as she came in.

"That's what the problem is. The only thing I can think of to do, at least until the issues with the flu shots get worked out and we can get more help here is to shut down the power to any areas I can't repair immediately. The problem is that's going to require moving people and I don't know if that's a good idea or not."

"I'll go check with Simmons and see what she thinks. Fitz, why don't you map out the list of areas you think we'll need to close. May, figure out how many people that we'll have to move and see where we can put them." Coulson told them before heading for the stairs.

He could hear soft voices as he knocked on the door, and if he didn't know better, he would swear that he was hearing Skye telling some sort of strange version of The Three Bears. 12 hours of tending sick people and other disasters. It was getting to him worse than dealing with Tony Stark. "Skye, Simmons?"

"Yes, sir?" Jemma called as she got up and went to the door, motioning for Skye to stop with her story. She hoped that there weren't any other problems with some of the other agents. Even with Agent Hand responding to a combination of IVs, the cooling blankets and the medicines, she was very reluctant to leave her bedside, not to mention the risk of bringing potentially dangerous germs back in if she did leave to look at the others, and then came back. "Are there any other problems?"

"Hopefully not. Or hopefully it's something that can be managed. The problem is that Fitz doesn't have the parts on hand to fix a lot of the things that our insane maintenance man damage. He's thinking shutting off power to anything that he can't immediately fix is the best option. That's going to involve moving people, though. Is there any reason medically that it wouldn't be safe to move them?"

"Secondary infection." Jemma said. "The more people you have in one place, the more germ exposure and the greater the risk of secondary infection." But then leaving them where they were, with potential fire and smoke hazards wasn't a wonderful option either. "You can move them, but try to limit the number to two to a room. And anyone who has a fever of 105, signs of dehydration or who has needed and IV, you need to keep them isolated. I know it makes things harder, but we really have to take every precaution we can at this point to keep secondary infections like pneumonia from sitting in. If they do, I'm not sure how we would manage to treat it."

"Right. We'll work out something. How's Victoria?"

"Her temperature's down to 102.7, and the tachycardia is starting to subside. She's sleeping, and I'm going to try to keep her that way for at least a few days. She needs to rest and get her strength it will be at least six to ten days before she's out of danger of contracting a secondary infection, but for now, she's stable."

Stable. Coulson sighed. One thing going right. And it was a big thing too, so he was just going to count that as a major plus. "The two of you just stay here and look after her. We'll manage everything else."

Jemma sat back down next to Agent Hand as she heard Coulson's footsteps moving away, and she motioned for Skye to go back to the story she had thought up, The Three Shield Agents and the Girl in the Flowered Dress.


	20. Chapter 20

Fury automatically looked towards the doorway to his office when his phone rang. No sign of Jasper, though, so he hit speaker as the answered. "Rogers, do you have anything for me?"

"We're still at the company. Tony thinks that there's something suspicious that the CEO." Steve reported. "And Doctor Banner says that the stories that they're offering about what caused the problems with the shots do make sense, but still, he's thinking there might be something off there too."

"The two of them are with you?" Fury asked.

"Hey, Director." Stark suddenly broke in. "Hope that you don't mind we came along for the ride on this. Pepper said something about how I need to get out more, and this seemed like a good opportunity. For some reason she thought it was alarming the staff that we're on a first name basis with every officer in the fire department and the bomb squad. Anyway, really sorry about your agents, but this guy, the CEO, something's off about him. He might be in panic and control mode. His company just made a whole lot of people sick, and did the Captain have it right that you guys have had one fatality so far?"

"I'm still trying to get official confirmation but it's been 10 hours without good news, so…" Wait. Banner was there. Maybe… He hung out with Stark and turned into a giant green rage monster, true, but maybe he could think of something that could be done where the medical staff had failed. "Put Banner on. I have some questions."

"Yes?" Banner said. Tony had switched the phone to speaker, so at least that made things easier.

"Doctor Banner, you know the problem I've got on my hands. 300 of my agents are down with this thing, and one of our major bases was completely taken down. And I have a level 8 senior agent who had a reported fever of 106.2 and was possibly on the verge of a seizure the last time I heard from anyone Do you have any opinions of what might have made her sick that fast or suggestions for possible treatments if she is somehow still alive?" Not that Fury was holding out much hope for that, but still, he had a tiny sliver.

Banner frowned. He really didn't like the idea of doing this, diagnosing something over the phone without seeing the patient. It was all to easy to make a mistake that way but he felt like he should at least tell Fury the most likely cause. "Cytokine storm is most likely what's to blame, and with the fever that high, I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't some sort of brain damage to the areas controlling temperature regulation."

There was a gasp, and Fury looked up to see Jasper in the doorway. He really needed to put a bell on that man, at least until this crisis was over.

"Brain damage. What level of brain damage are we talking about here?"

"For her temperature to get that high, without something else going on besides the infection, I would guess there was damage to the areas controlling temperature regulation like I said. Then with her temperature shooting up to those levels, the damage would be massive, and if the areas controlling the temperature were damaged, it would be pretty much impossible to reverse the situation."

"Thank you." Fury said with a shake of his head.

"Wait. Wait." Jasper held his phone away from his ear. How was John shouting so loudly from two phones away? "What about putting her into a medically induced coma? Or cryotherapy? Could something like that buy her time?" But it had been 10 hours since they had heard from Phil. Did Victoria even have time left?

"If the part of her brain that regulates her temperature is damaged, nothing's going to fix that. I really wish I could suggest something. And maybe I'm wrong. There could be something else going on that's responsible for the high temperature, something that might be reversible. I haven't seen her, I haven't seen any brain scans that would let me say for sure. Damage like that's just my first thought."

"And I appreciate it." Fury said. "As for the situation with the pharmaceutical company, do any of you have any ideas yet as to whether this was an accident or sabotage?"

"The CEO's suspicious." Stark said. "I've heard things about him, about debts to some pretty dangerous people."

"And the something just seems off about their medical staff. I can't put my thumb on it, but something just doesn't feel right." Banner added.

"Okay, then the three of you stay on it, do whatever you have to. I want to know if this was an accident or not, and if it wasn't, my people deserve justice for this."

"Did Rogers find out anything?" Maria had arrived just in time to hear the last of the phone call.

"He had Stark and Banner with him, and some things are making them suspicious, which is making me seriously suspicious." Fury replied.

"This could have been an attack?"

"I hope not but nothing they said rules it out for me."

"I did some looking online." Jasper said quietly. "I found a nice tombstone. Black with white engraving. Felix thought Victoria would like it. Do you think I ought to go ahead and place the order? And do we have a plot somewhere yet?" Hearing what Doctor Banner had said, any hope he had had, was gone. "We ought to get her a nice plot, with maybe a tree?" A fever had killed her. It seemed fitting to bury her in the cool shade of a tree.

"I looked online last night." Maria said. "It was hard to sleep. I found an outfit by Armani that might look nice for the funeral. Do you think I should…."

"Order it. Jasper see about the tombstone." Fury said as he opened his computer and pulled up the cemeteries that Shield held spaces in. Surely one of them would have a nice tree. Funerals. He really, really wished he could have found a way to avoid this funeral.


	21. Chapter 21

"Fitz, how's it going?" Coulson called as he came into the Hub's cafeteria. Twenty-four hours. He couldn't believe it had only been twenty-four hours since they got here. It felt more like a month. And his suit had held up better to a round with Loki than it had to a day of tending sick people. That probably meant something. Maybe instead of fighting if Loki popped up again they ought to send him something contaminated with this virus.

"It's going slowly." Fitz glared down at Edwin Tuttle, who was wrapped in a blanket and curled into a ball of misery on the floor, too miserable for Fitz to even work himself up properly over the damage the man had done. No use wasting a good rant on someone who was too sick to hear you. "We've just now got the power shut off to all of the areas that I can't fix immediately."

"How much of the building is without power now?" Coulson asked.

"Two thirds. I had to divert a lot of power to keep up the defenses and sensors in case this turns out to be something more than an accident." Fitz said with a frown.

Two thirds of her building down. Coulson was very, very glad that Jemma had Victoria under sedation so she wouldn't find out about this, until hopefully her fever broke. But better to take down two thirds than to loose the defenses and sensors. "Alright. Any idea of how long to get the most critical repairs done?"

"Like I said. At least a day, and that's if we don't run into more problems." Fitz said. "Ward's making sandwiches and then we're going to get to work. You might want to get something to eat yourself, sir. We had to shut down power to the kitchen, so that food won't last for long."

"I put together something for Simmons and Skye." Ward said as he came out with a plate of sandwiches in one hand, and a cooler bag with food for the other two agents in the other. He just hoped that Fitz wasn't expecting a sandwich on the level as the one Simmons made.

"Food?" May said as she came in. "What are we going to feed these people? Twenty-four hours without food, that isn't good."

Feeding 300 people. Coulson had no clue how they were going to manage that. What could they come up with that they could eat when they were so sick, first of all, and then how were they going to get food into them, with almost everyone curled up into little balls of flu infested misery? It looked like spoon feeding might be added to their assignment along with temperature taking and general nursing. "I'll take the food upstairs, and see if Simmons has any ideas for what to do as far as food." He said as he motioned for Ward to hand over the cooler bag. And if they had to spoon feed everyone, that was just what they would have to do.

"Food for the two of you." Coulson called as he knocked on Victoria's office door a few minutes later.

"Food." Jemma suddenly felt hunger catching up with her at the mention of food. "Sir, thank you!"

"Ward put it together. I do have a question about the other agents. They're going on twenty-four hours or longer without food. Any ideas for what we could feed them? They need something, right?"

Feeding the other agents. They definitely did need something, Coulson was right, but feeding them could be complicated, especially if the fever and pain made them as nauseous as Agent Hand had been when they were trapped. "A glucose drip might be best, at least for those who are already on IVs. That's what I'm doing with Agent Hand." She paused, thinking of that would be best to suggest for the others. "Could you make up a chicken broth, or really just any sort of broth? They need something that's light and easy to digest, and that will help with replenishing their fluids. But if they're too nauseous, you might need to start more IVs."

"Broth and more IVs. We'll handle it. How's Victoria?"

"Her fever's hovering at 101.7, and she's sleeping." Jemma said with a smile.

101.7. Coulson felt relief wash over him. After how sick Victoria had been, when he had seen her down in that basement, to have her improving that much that fast felt like a miracle. "The two of you just stay with her. I'll leave the food outside the door."

"What did they leave us?" Skye looked up as Jemma collected the bag quickly and ducked back inside.

"Sandwiches. Not as good as mine, but not bad." Jemma said as she pulled several sandwiches wrapped in wax paper out of the bag. Sandwiches, packets of cookies and….

"Ice cream!" Skye exclaimed as she pulled out the last items, two pint sized containers of ice cream. Nothing exotic just plain vanilla and chocolate, but…. "Jemma, do you think we could try and see if she could eat just a little of it? It might make her feel better to actually get something in her stomach instead of just fluids in her arm."

Jemma frowned, remembering the nausea from the lab, but then a lot of that was likely due to the high temperature. With it down so much, maybe food would be good if they could wake Agent Hand a little to swallow. "We can give it a try."

"Good. Hey, we've got some ice cream here. Think you can wake up a little to eat some?" Skye called and was rewarded with a weak flutter of eyelashes. "You don't have to open your eyes. Just try to swallow, okay? This is going to make you feel better, we promise." Her lips twitched just enough for Skye to coax a tiny spoonful of ice cream in that she slowly swallowed after a few seconds. Skye and Jemma both smiled at that and Skye scooped up another tiny bit of ice cream to feed her. This was going to work out fine.

"Rogers? Do you have something to report?" Fury saved the file he was working on, Victoria's eulogy, when he heard his phone. He listened closely for the ringing of a bell before switching it to speaker.

"Tony's working on the CEO. Apparently he's deeply in debt of the Maggia. I'm not sure how that might lead to a deliberate sabotage of the flu shots, but that's what we have so far. Doctor Banner's trying to talk to some of the medical staff here. Hopefully he'll find out something that way. Have you got an update on the sick agents?"

"Not yet." And the longer it went without an update, the more worried he became. 300 sick agents. What if they lost them all? What if Coulson or his team got infected? Losing Victoria was going to be bad enough, and he would be hard pressed to find someone to take her place. 'Keep working on it. I want to know who's responsible for this!"

"Do you think Victoria would like her picture on her tombstone?" Jasper asked when Felix answered his phone. "I was just about to place the order when I saw that they offered that as an option. Do you think it would be nice, or would it be too much?"

"I'm not sure. How do they get the pictures on the stone?" Felix asked as he saved the eulogy he was working on. He wasn't sure how many people woold be allowed to speak, but he wanted to be prepared. "And why do I hear a bell?"

"Fury told me I had to wear it until the lock-down's lifted. They have a couple of ways to get the pictures on there, but the one I like is airbrushing or sandbrushing or something like that. Maybe a black and white picture with the red in her hair for color? She would look really nice like that."

"Wait. Wait. Has Phil actually called and said that Vic's…. He hasn't confirmed it, has he?" John demanded from the second phone turned to speaker on Felix's death.

"Fury hasn't said anything, but it's been twenty-four hours, and with how sick she was the last time we heard from anyone…." Jasper lowered his head as he thought of what had happened. Had it been quick? He hoped it had been quick and that Victoria hadn't had time to realize what was happening. He hoped she hadn't had time to be afraid.

"Maybe he's busy? He has 300 sick people on his hands. Even with five other people on his team, that's a lot of sick people. If Vic really was gone, wouldn't he have let someone know?" John asked.

"John, even if by some miracle Victoria was alive, the damage she would have suffered…." Felix couldn't bring himself to finish the sentence, the idea of Victoria brain damaged and left to waste away in a hospital bed so distasteful to him that he couldn't voice it.

"I hope she didn't suffer. I just hope she didn't suffer. If they couldn't save her, I hope it was quick." Jasper said.

"But…. I just think we ought to know for sure before we plan our funeral, is all. Any chance Fury might lift the lock-down and send someone there to see what's going on?"

"Not a chance. Until medical clears up the issues with the shots, there's no way that Fury's letting anyone in or out. As much as I hate it, Phil's on his own." Jasper said.


	22. Chapter 22

"We have the person responsible for the defective vaccines, Sir." Steve said as soon as Fury answered his phone. "What would you like us to do with him?"

"What? Someone was…" Fury waved for Maria, who was passing in the hall, to join him as he switched the phone to speaker once he checked and made sure he didn't hear Jasper's bell. "Are you saying this was deliberate?"

"I'm afraid so." Steve looked at the doctor, who was backed into a corner with Tony glaring at him, and Bruce looking like he might let his green altered out at any moment in anger over what the man had done.

"Someone… Was this aimed at Shield?" Fury demanded, his anger swiftly mounting.

"No, Sir. Like we told you yesterday, the CEO's in debt to the Maggia. He's been cutting funding and reducing pay to try to keep things afloat. One of the doctors working on the vaccines got angry over having his pay cut, and he sabotaged the shots out of some attempt to get even. It wasn't directed at anyone. He didn't have a clue where the shots would go. He just wanted people to get sick and the CEO to be destroyed by the fallout."

"He…. Get him in here now. I've lost one of my level 8 senior agents thanks to him, I have over 300 people sick, and I've been forced to lock down every Shield installation. Get him in here and he's going to see sick!" Fury couldn't believe this. All of those people sick and maybe dying, and Victoria…. Thinking it was some sort of accident was bad enough, but to find out that it was deliberate, due to a grudge….

Maria shook her head as Fury ended the call. "Sir…" But she stopped, not sure of what to say. That many people sick, Victoria dying the way she had, and all because someone was mad at their boss?

"Someone deliberately killed Victoria?" Jasper was in the doorway, looking pale once more, and Fury didn't know how he had got there without him hearing the ringing of the bell.

"If Rogers and company are right, he wasn't targeting anyone specifically." Fury said. "He just wanted to make people sick."

"He did more than make Victoria sick. He killed her." And the way that she died, Jasper felt like throwing up just thinking about it. Had she felt anything, had she known what was happening? He just hoped she had been unconscious or in a coma at the last, and had been spared that. "Director…."

"We'll deal with him. Did you need something?"

"Oh." Jasper remembered what he had came to alert Fury about. The shock about the shots had almost caused it to slip his mind. "I just got a call from a friend who works at one at the Cube. John and his man Triplett were there when you put Shield into lockdown. Well, John managed to get out somehow, They don't have a clue how, and they don't know where he is."

"Just perfect. Please tell me he wasn't showing signs of the flu!" Fury growled. The last think they needed was an infected agent on the loose.

"No, but he was taking the situation with Victoria badly. I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't going to try to head there." Jasper said.

Just perfect. Garrett taking off to check on his frienemy/substitute sister, or whatever explained the relationship he had with Victoria. Fury picked up the phone and dialed Coulson for the millionth time since this had started. Maybe he would get lucky. Maybe he would finally answer.

Coulson checked the cart as he wheeled it down the hallway. A large pot full of some sort of watered down oatmeal cooked on the BUS, a stack of bowls, spoons, and a dish of ice cream for Victoria, with a scattering of sprinkles on top. Someone was probably going to have to do some dishes soon. A day now of feeding sick people, and they were getting close to running out of clean things.

Before he could think about who would be put on dish duty, he heard a loud pounding, that sounded like it was coming from one of the main doors. He pulled his gun, and leaving the cart there, he cautiously headed towards the door. He didn't know why someone who was attacking them would be announcing themselves by knocking on the door, but with all of the agents there so sick, he wasn't taking chances.

"Phil!" Garrett shouted as soon as he spotted the other agent.

"John? What are you doing here?" Coulson demanded. No, he didn't have paperwork that was three months late in hand, or a notice that said IRS on the front. We're on lock-down. No one in or out. If you need something…"

"All of Shield is on lock-down. I was lucky to find a way out of the Cube." Phil looked frazzled. Was that a bad sign or was it to be expected after two days of taking care of sick people.

"Fury locked down all of Shield? What's going on?"

"The mess with the shots. He put everything on lock-down until they're sure of what's going on. Phil, what about Vic?" Part of him didn't want to hear the answer, was afraid of what he might hear, l, but he had escaped a lock-down of a Shield facility to know for sure. "Is she…. Is she dead?"

"Dead?" Coulson looked at Garrett in confusion. Was he sick with the flu, suffering a fever and possibly delusions? "No, she's not dead. She's asleep in her office. Are you feeling alright?"

"Asleep? She's…. Fury heard you and that little hacker over the phone, talking about her. Fever of 106.2. Dying. Fury heard one of you say she was dying."

"What?" Coulson thought back to what Skye had said when they got her out of the vent, and he realized how Fury might have heard it.

"Fury's been calling every doctor that he could find, to try to find a way to help. Phil, they said that they thought that she was suffering a cytokine storm, that a fever that high would have fried her brain. They said there was nothing that could be done, that death would probably be more merciful."

"What?" Oh, he had to find his phone and call Fury.

"They've been planning her funeral! Fury already bought her coffin, and I think Jasper's got a tombstone order in."

"What?" That seemed to be one of the few things that Coulson could say. A coffin and a tombstone? Shouldn't they have a body before they started making purchases like that? "She's asleep!"

"Asleep?"

"Fast asleep. Fever's still running around 101, and Agent Simmons is keeping her lightly sedated for the moment, but she's stable and getting better."

"101. Stable." Garrett felt himself sagging with relief. But then another fear hit. The fever, had it been high enough to cause brain damage? "Phil, open the door!"

"You couldn't see her even if I did. Simmons has her isolated for the moment to protect her from any additional germs. Because of the fever going so high, she's going to be at risk for a secondary infection like pneumonia for awhile. I'm not even allowed in."

Pneumonia. Protect her from getting pneumonia. That was good. But…. "Has she been awake at all? Did it seem like, well, like she was Vic or…."

"She's sick with the flu and was miserable with a fever, but she somehow managed to stay at least semi-conscious until Simmons sedated her. A fever that probably would have caused most people to go into a coma. Does that sound like something's wrong with her brain? How many people has Fury told about what he thought?"

"Hill, Jasper, and then Jasper told Felix, and Felix told me." And who else had those two told? He had heard wild speculation about Victoria's funeral circulating all over the Cube. "I think pretty much everyone in Shield knows by now."

Everyone in Shield. He definitely had to find his phone and call Fury. "Stay here. I've got to take food upstairs. I'll see if Simmons or Skye can do something." Maybe they could send a picture or something that would satisfy John for the moment.

John was still examining the pictures on his phone when Coulson came back. Victoria looked pale and almost tiny, wrapped in those cooling blankets, with an IV dripping into her arm, but she was breathing. She was alive after what he had expected. "I'm going to have to join a monastery. Do you know any good monasteries that are hiring?"

I liked the interaction Garrett and Victoria had in End of the Beginning and wanted to use that in this, so I'm going with no Hydra or a different Hydra in this.


	23. Chapter 23

"A monastery? You aren't Catholic." Phil said as he looked at John in confusion.

"Guess I'll have to convert too, then." John muttered under his breath, not even looking away from the pictures of Vic. She would probably want to kill him when she realized he had seen her like that, looking small, sick and vulnerable, but seeing as we had thought that he was going to be seeing her in a coffin, he would gladly take whatever she wanted to throw at him. "It's probably not to hard to convert, right? And surely there's a monastery somewhere that's hiring. "She's alive, Phil. I promised if Fury would be wrong, if Vic would make it through this, that I would change, that I would be better."

"And you think joining a monastery is the way to do that?" Phil asked.

"What trouble could I get up to in a monastery? They pray all the time. I can do that." He certainly had prayed enough on the way here, praying that what Fury had heard was a mistake, that the doctors he had consulted had made a mistake, that Vic was alive and still herself. "And is that bagpipes I hear?"

"Here's a hint. Never let Fitz make modifications to your phone if you don't want an interesting ringtone." But where was his phone? He didn't see it on the ground, so he forced himself to move slowly, following the sound of the bagpipes blaring. Not on the floor. He didn't see it anywhere on the floor. But there was the hole they had pulled Skye through and… He reached in and there was his phone, Fury's name on the screen, along with a message flashing for 974 missed calls. "Director?"

"Coulson." Fury sighed with relief when he hear his voice. "Could I ask why I have been trying for two days now to contact you and your team without an answer?"

"We've been trying to take care of 300 sick people, and a few phones might have gone missing along the way." As far as he knew, May and Skye were actually the only people who still had their phones on them, and May had been using hers to receive or make calls to her mother for advice every time they ran into yet another issue in nursing the sick agents. And did anyone at Shield even have Skye's number?

Fury didn't even bother asking for details about the lost phones. "I was wanting to let you know that John Garrett might be heading your way."

"I know. He's here. And he told me something interesting." How to tell Fury about Victoria? The only way that he could think of to do it was fast, like ripping a band-aid off. "Victoria, she's not dead. You might want to see about getting a refund on that coffin John said you bought for her."

"What?" Fury looked up as he heard two gasps from the doorway to find Maria and Jasper standing there. How in the world did Jasper keep sneaking up on his door, even after having a bell stuck around his neck? "I heard that hacker of yours taking, the day this all started. She said fever of 106.2 and possible seizures. I talked to the doctors here. I talked to the doctors at the Fridge and the Treehouse. I talked to Bruce Banner. They all said that a fever that high, that fast was a sign of a cytokine storm, and that there was nothing that could be done for it. They said she didn't have a chance!"

"And I can see that, but the temperature wasn't just from the fever." Coulson said. "Victoria was trying to lock down the labs, and she managed to get trapped in one of the labs where some sort of heater was malfunctioning. Her temperature went as high as it did from a combination of the infection and either a heat stroke or something close to it. We got her out of there, Simmons got her on an IV and wrapped in cooling blankets. Her temperature came down. She's fine. She's sleeping in her office right now, under light sedation."

"She's alive?" Jasper whispered to Maria. At first he was thrilled by the news, but then the worry about brain damage hit him again. Did it matter what had made her temperature shoot up so high? Infection or heat stroke, no matter which one, wouldn't the risk of brain damage be the same? What if Coulson and his people had saved Victoria only to condemn her to a life wasting away in a hospital bed?

Fury was thinking along the same lines. "No matter what caused it, a temperature that high…. Has she been conscious at all?"

"She was semi-conscious at least until Simmons sedated her. Sick from the fever, and it didn't seem like her hearing was working the best, but she seemed like she knew we were there and knew where she was."

That was a bit of a comfort but still, Fury waved for Maria and indicated that he wanted someone from medical up there yesterday. Maybe with a bit more information, they could get something close to a correct diagnosis this time. "How bad?"

"A lot better than what I was expecting when you asked us to come to the Hub and take care of everyone." Coulson said. "Temperature's hovering around 101. Simmons has her under light sedation, light enough that they've been able to rouse her a few times to get her to eat a little. She's going to be isolated in her office for eight to ten days because of the risk of secondary infection. Her temperature going that high, and how she was fighting to stay awake took a lot out of her."

"But she's alive."

"Definitely alive. Do I need to send you pictures? John needed pictures." Coulson said.

"Pictures would be good." And maybe if they could actually see her, the doctors could get things right this time. "What about the rest of the agents?"

"They're sick and miserable, but nothing worse than you would expect with the flu. We're managing, although it hasn't helped that one of Victoria's level 4 maintenance men hasn't been doing his job, and nearly turned the building into a fire trap. Do you have any idea when we can get people in here? We're seriously low on supplies for repairs, and two thirds of the building is without power at the moment."

"We're still working on the issues with the shots, but Captain Rogers, Banner and Stark finally found the man responsible, so hopefully we'll be able to get the shot issue worked out sooner rather than later. What happened to Victoria's building?"

"Yot that I've don't want to know, and I'm glad that she's in isolation for eight to ten days. Hopefully we can have things fixed before I have to tell her what's wrong." Coulson said. "Do you think I can let John in?"

"Not until we figure out the shot issue. Tell him he's going to have to camp out." That was the only option Fury could see and it would serve Garrett right to have to sleep on the ground for a couple of days or more, after how he disobeyed orders and escaped lock-down.

"Right. But even if you can't let anyone in, is there some way you can have parts delivered? We're having to feed these people based on what we can cook on the BUS. We're set up to cook for six people on there, not 300. What about asking Stark? Surely he could come up with some sort of automatic parts delivery system."

"Maybe. But everyone there is stable? No sign of complications or any other problems?" Fury asked.

"Not that I can see." Having two people dispense medical treatments based on information provided over the phone by one of the people's mother didn't count for a complication, did it? "But if you can work out a way to get us more supplies, and the food stores are going to be running low soon since the kitchen lost power."

"Food. Supplies. I'll see what I can do about getting something set up. Maybe Stark has some employees who actually got a flu shot that works that we can borrow for a supply run. I'll call when I know more so try not to lose your phone again?"

"Victoria's alive?" Maria said as soon as Fury hung up the phone. Even hearing Coulson saying it, after what the doctors had said about her condition, it seemed unbelievable. "Are we sure that Coulson isn't finally losing it?"

"Why would Coulson lose it?" Jasper asked, just as his phone beeped. "Felix?"

"Jasper, were you the one who did the write-up for Victoria that was in the paper this morning?" Felix asked. "I have to say it's very good. I'm sure she would have been pleased with it."

"Write-up?" Jasper paled. He had put together Victoria's obituary the night before, but surely he hadn't been so tired that he accidentally clicked send!

"Her obituary's in The Washington Post. It's a fitting tribute to her, and the picture's a nice touch."

He had clicked send. Oh, boy. "Felix, we have a little problem. Phil just called. Turns out Victoria's alive."


	24. Chapter 24

"Victoria's alive?" Felix said, disbelief obvious in his voice. He had hounded his staff, hoping there might be a solution among all of the strange things they dealt with, and they had said there was nothing, that the best to hope for was for a quick death from a seizure, rather than slow suffocation from her lungs filling with fluid from pneumonia or the flu itself.

"Here, let me go to speaker." Jasper said as the director's phone beeped and a picture popped up.

"Can a fever actually make someone shrink?" Maria whispered as she looked at the picture. Victoria was six feet tall. How in the world could she look absolutely tiny and fragile in those pictures?

"She does look smaller." Jasper said. "Director, can you forward those pictures to Felix? Victoria's not going to like it if she's shrunk due to this." But the way she looked, so small and vulnerable, not like their Victoria at all, would she even realize if she had somehow shrunk? Seeing her like that, the fear of brain damage came rushing back full force.

"Director?" the first doctor from medical stood at the door, trying to keep from shaking. What disaster was he about to be questioned about now?

"Doctor, we've finally reestablished communications with the Hub, and I have an update on Agent Hand's condition. Fever down to 101 and sleeping in her office. Would you like to explain to me how this could be when you clearly said she was dying not more than two days ago?" Fury's voice was calm, but he was seething inside. He had spent two days thinking Victoria was on death's door, or already gone, thinking that he was potentially facing losing over 150 agents, based on what the doctors had told him. He had spent energy on that that would have been better spent focusing on getting them help.

"She…." The doctor looked wildly around the room and debated trying to escape for a moment before he realized Maria Hill had moved behind him to block the door. "I don't know what to say. Based on the symptoms that you reported before, a cytokine storm was the obvious diagnosis. Are you sure that whoever reported from the Hub had the correct information?"

"My good eye? I don't see him getting something like that wrong. Take a look." Fury said as he held out the phone with the pictures of Victoria.

The doctor cringed as he looked. Alive, she was definitely alive but…. "Have they ran blood tests? There isn't an actual doctor on Agent Coulson's team, is there? I'm wondering if what they might be seeing as improvement could be the start of septic shock. And with the fever she was first reported to have…."

"She got locked in a hot room for who knows how long. Coulson thinks that was probably responsible for part of why her temperature was so high." Fury told him.

The doctor thought. "That could do it, but Sir, whether the temperature was caused by the infection or a potential heat stroke, I'm afraid the results are likely going to be the same in regards to brain damage. I wouldn't get my hopes up, And if you can, contact Agent Coulson and see if they can draw blood for testing. They really might be looking at the beginnings of septic shock."

Who in the world was Phil talking to, May wondered as she headed down the hall with a cart loaded with more food for the sick agents. Maybe he had finally found his phone and had called to update Fury. And hopefully Fury would have good news about getting help to them. 300 sick agents, well 299 with Victoria having Skye and Simmons as her personal nurses, and over half of them were sick and weak enough to need to be spoonfed.

Just then her phone rang. "Mom?" she said as she answered it.

"Melinda, I was just calling to say that your agency arranged a lovely write-up for Victoria." Her mother said. "I'm sure she would have been very pleased with it."

"Write-up? What are you talking about? And where did you see this write-up?" Why would a sick agent call for a write-up somewhere, level 8 or not?

"It was in the Tribune. I believe they picked it up from the Associated Press. It was a lovely obituary, Melinda."

"Obit…" Her jaw dropped, and for a moment she wondered if her mother had suddenly lost her mind. "Mom, Victoria's not dead! I'll call you right back." She said as she cut off the call and hurried down the hallway to find Phil, pulling up the internet and searching as she moved.

"We have a problem." she said as soon as she spotted him. "What's he doing here?"

"He came to check on Victoria. Please tell me we haven't had another fire. I thought Fitz had the worst damage taken care of."

"We'e going to wish it was a fire. I just got a call from my mother. Take a look." May said as she handed him her phone. "Someone put an obituary for Victoria in the Washington Post and the Associated Press picked it up. It's in all of the major papers."

"What?" Coulson read the obituary, not able to believe what he was seeing. The write-up was nice, very nice but still… "And this is everywhere?"

"The picture they used is nice." John called through the door after pulling up the obituary on his own phone. "Is that from the last annual office Christmas party before human resources said we weren't allowed to have Christmas parties anymore? Or any parties? Maybe Vic'll get a date out of it?"

"It's an obituary! People don't go through the pictures in the obituaries looking for potential dates. I've got to call Fury. How did this get out there?" And how could they make it vanish, preferably before Victoria woke up.


	25. Chapter 25

Coulson? Fury raised an eyebrow when he saw the number on his phone. What was he doing calling back so soon. Against his will, his mind went to what the doctor had said about Victoria, possible brain damage and septic shock. "Coulson?"

"Sir, Agent May's mother just called and pointed something interesting out. Could I ask who wrote up Victoria's obituary and put it the newspaper without even bothering to check and make sure she was actually DEAD?! Because whoever it was, they should know that the Associated Press has picked it up, and it's in all of the major papers!"

"What?" Fury pulled up the search engine on his computer and saw a few seconds latter that Coulson was right.

"And it's trending on Twitter." Maria added as she looked up from her phone. "Apparently you impressed a whole lot of people with your writing, Jasper."

"Do you think Victoria will see that, and will decide not to kill me?" Jasper moaned. "I swear, I didn't mean to send that. I thought I clicked SAVE!" And why in the world had the Associated Press picked the thing up? Okay, after all Victoria had done for Shield, she did deserve all of the attention and praise in death she could be given, but still…. She wasn't dead, and why hadn't some celebrity been caught without underpants to keep this thing from spreading far and wide? When she found out…. He might as well go ahead and start writing his own obituary. He would probably need it soon.

"Excuse me!" Felix called from Jasper's phone. "But here's another thing we might need to worry about. Does Victoria have any family that might read this? Couldn't being notified about a death that way be more than a bit alarming, and when you consider the fact that Victoria's alive…."

"Please tell me she doesn't have parents or grandparents or elderly aunts that are going to die over this." Jasper moaned. He probably ought to know something about Victoria's family. Hadn't he written about them for her obituary? But shock was making that information skip clean out of his mind. What would she do to him if she woke up and found out that she had lost relatives thanks to his little write-up?

"I'll make some calls." May said, wincing as she thought about what could happen if the wrong people saw that article. "What about Director Carter? You know she takes losing agents badly, and even though she isn't running things…."

"I've got that." John said as he looked up from his phone for a moment before the line was picked up. "Tripplett? Yes, I know I broke out of a lock-down. I had to come to the Hub to check on Vic, that's why! Tripp… Listen, does your grandmother read the paper anymore? You might want to call and see if you can have her reading censored for awhile. And maybe blow up her TV. Why? Because Vic's obituary's in the paper, and she isn't dead. Yes, yes, I'm sure of that. And I'm sure that your grandmother worked with her so if you could just…. Right. And tell anyone who's giving you a hard time over my getting out of there that you had nothing to do with it. And did they really think you could have done something to stop me?"

"Okay, so we're going to try to avoid killing off Victoria's family, and the first head of our organization. That's good." Maria said.

"But if you can get that obituary pulled, it would be even better." Coulson said. But how could they pull it if it had gone so far? If the paper printed a retraction, it would probably be buried in the middle of the weather report where no one would see it.

"I'll see what we can do." Fury paused, remembering what the doctor had said about the likelihood that Victoria had suffered brain damage, and the possibility of septic shock. He quickly typed that into the search engine and cringed as he read the damage it could cause, and the mortality rate. "I have another concern, though. We talked to one of the doctors at medical here. I updated him about Victoria's condition, and showed him the pictures you sent. He's still highly concerned about the potential for brain damage. He also expressed a worry that she could be developing septic shock, and wanted to know if your bio-chemist has done blood tests."

"Septic…." Coulson shook his head, not believing what he was hearing. Were these doctors actually WANTING Victoria to die? "She's asleep! Simmons and Skye have been in the room with her for two days sitting at her bedside. Don't you think they would have noticed if something was wrong? I can tell Simmons to draw blood, but sir, I really think you might want to see about hiring a few new doctors."

"I hope I do need to." Although if there was one thing Fury hated, it was breaking in new people. "But with what the doctor's are saying, and with how high her fever got, I have some serious concerns. Have your people been able to run any tests beyond basic monitoring?"

"Tests would involve moving her, for anything but blood draws, and that isn't safe right now." Coulson said. He couldn't believe this. "She's fine. She's sleeping. I'll tell Simmons to draw the blood and maybe Fitz can run it if you want, but she's fine! My people have been with her for two days! There's no way they would have missed septic shock!"

"Get the blood ran, and I would like an EEG too, if they can." Brain damage. Even without the doctor telling him, he knew what a fever that high could do to the brain, and Coulson ought to know it too. "I'm going to block her access until there are some test results clearing her of impairment." He really should have done that when this thing first started.

"Block…." Coulson shook his head, and fought not to laugh. "I think you ought to go and find a place to take a nap. The stress is getting to you, Director. But I will get those results." Skye was smart. Jemma could walk her through faking results that would calm down the director, he was sure.

"Did Fury just say…." John's eyes were wide with horror when Coulson disconnected the phone call. "Phil, open this door now!" Septic shock, he had seen someone with that once, seen someone dying from it. If Vic…. "Phil!"

"She's fine! Maybe the doctors at the Triskelion have invested in the mortuary we use?" Or would that be a conflict of interest? Probably, but that didn't mean that they hadn't. "John, she's fine. She's sleeping. I've had people right there at her bedside for two days and they haven't reported a problem. She's fine. They've even been able to get her semi-conscious so they could coax ice cream down her. She's fine, and if I let you in here, you would probably pose a danger to her."

"Ice cream? She let someone spoonfeed her?" He actually smiled at that, and at how Vic would take being ill enough to need such care.

"Want more pictures? I just took another bowl up to her."

"You just tell your people to take good care of her. And promise her that I'll get whatever ice cream she wants. Just rest and get well." And he really had to start looking for a monastery that was hiring. Vic getting through this and getting well, what were a few vows of poverty, obedience and chastity in comparison to that?


	26. Chapter 26

"Stark, what are you doing here?" Fury demanded as Steve came into the office with the man he assumed was to blame for the defective shots in tow, Banner and Stark right behind him.

"Unlike your organization, my company arranged for our flu shots to be provided by a reputable company. All safe and vaccinated against the flu." Stark said with a smirk.

"Gamma radiation. As good as a vaccine." Bruce said. "But I've had one of those too, to be on the safe side."

Well, at least that was one thing he wouldn't have to worry about. Stark and Banner with the flu and a fever was a disaster waiting to happen. "This is him?" Fury said as he glared at the shaking man in front of him. Okay, Victoria wasn't dead, and the situation at the Hub was nowhere near as bad as he had been afraid it would be, but still, this man had shut down his entire organization for days over a grudge. And even though she wasn't dead, Victoria could very well never be the same again thanks to him. "Name?"

"Everett Dalton." Steve supplied.

"Mister Dalton." Fury glared at the man. "Thanks to your actions, I have over 300 people sick, and have been forced to place my entire organization on lock-down. Do you know the damage you have done? Missions to take down terrorists, to deal with threats you could not begin to imagine have been put on hold thanks to you. People may well be dead now thanks to you. One of my level 8 senior agents may have suffered brain damage thanks to you. So you can be sure that I will be making your life miserable for the foreseeable future. Maria, get him out here, and see if Romanoff is in the building. I'm sure she would love to have a little chat with him." Fury called to the agent standing in the doorway with Jasper. And how had Jasper snuck up on him again? Had he used a defective bell?

"Sir, I thought you said that one of your level 8 agents died from this?" Steve said as soon as Dalton was gone.

"I thought she had, but we finally reestablished communications with the Hub and got an update. No fatalities yet, but the doctors are still saying with how high her temperature went that she's likely suffered brain damage."

"You've had an update? What did they say?" Bruce asked.

"Fever down to 101 and she's sleeping under light sedation. Apparently she got locked into a room that was overheated for awhile,"

"Overheated room. That could do it. And that would probably rule out damage to the part of the brain controlling temperature regulation. That's good."

"But the doctors here are still expressing concerns about how high her temperature was, regardless of what caused it." Fury said. "The seem to think that brain damage is likely from that alone, and they've raised concerns about possible septic shock."

"Septic…. Is that your agent?" Bruce asked as he saw the pictures on Fury's phone. "Can I look?"

"Look, definitely look." Jasper said before Fury could say anything. Was Doctor Banner maybe suggesting that there was some hope for Victoria being okay?

He really didn't like to try giving a diagnosis like this, but…. "You need to hire new doctors." Bruce said after studying the pictures for several minutes. "Whoever told you she might have septic shock, they don't know what they're talking about."

"You're sure of that?" Fury demanded.

"Positive." Bruce looked at the pictures again. "Heartrate's 85, O2 levels are good, her blood pressure's steady. Only one IV, and I'm betting that's mainIy for hydration and probably some calories. I don't know how whoever suggested septic shock came up with that. She isn't presenting with symptoms of that at all, except for the fever."

When he got his hands on that doctor… "What about brain damage? Can you give me any odds on the potential for brain damage, with a temperature of 106.2 even though they brought it down?"

"I would need to talk to someone there to be sure of anything." Brain damage, that would be tricky to diagnose without consulting with the people on site, or actually being there. "Have they said how long her temperature was that high? If they were able to bring it down fast enough, that would have been a big help in protecting her brain. Has she been conscious at all?"

"Semi-conscious."

"Right, semi-conscious. They said they were able to wake her up enough to feed her something." Felix added. Hope, he was feeling hope coming back. Maybe Victoria had a chance of coming out of this and being herself? She would kill him, of course, over the obituary, but if that meant she was okay….

"Okay, she was able to swallow. She could probably follow verbal commands as well. It might be a little hard to check for orientation as long as she's sedated, but…." Bruce paused. He really, really would like to talk to someone who was actually there before he offered a diagnosis, but still, what Fury and company had told by the doctors had been so negative, and so obviously wrong…. "Following verbal commands, the fact she can swallow, those are good signs. I don't know who this lady is, but I wouldn't write her off yet."

"Thank you, Doctor Banner. I'll definitely keep that in mind." And he would definitely need to make another call to Coulson. "Stark, besides the sick agents, the Hub's experiencing some sort of mechanical problems that they're lacking parts to repair. If I can get lists of what they need, can you have them delivered?"

"Seeing as my employees actually got shots to PREVENT the flu this year, yeah, I think we can manage." Stark said with a laugh. "What sort of problems are we talking about?"

"Enough that they had to cut power to two thirds of the building. I'll get lists for you."

"Fine, and I'll call Pepper and make sure we have a plane ready to go as soon as you can tell me what you need." And maybe he would tell Pepper he was making another little trip. Whatever was going on at that Shield base, he really, really wanted to get a look. Bruce would be happy to go along to help all of those sick people, and Rogers would as well. An Avengers road trip!


	27. Chapter 27

"Simmons?" Coulson called as he knocked on Victoria's office door. The little scientist was not going to be happy when she heard what Fury was thinking. Even though she wasn't an actual doctor, she was sure to be offended that the director thought she could miss the symptoms of septic shock, when she had been sitting at Victoria's bedside for two days.

"Sir, what's Agent Garrett doing here? Has the director finally sent more help?" Jemma called. She and Skye were managing fine with Agent Hand, but she knew the others could really use the help, especially with how she had heard Fitz ranting about the damage that apparently insane maintenance man had caused to the building. She was going to have to have a talk with Fitz about yelling so loudly. It wasn't going help Agent Hand's recovery if she woke up to someone implying that her building might be about to burn to the ground.

"No help yet. John just heard about how sick Victoria was and decided breaking out of a lock-down to come check on her was a wonderful idea. How is she doing?"

"Asleep again, but I'm going to see about switching her to a different medication soon, so I expect her to wake up a bit more by tomorrow."

Waking up. That was good, although if Victoria woke up and found out what was going on, with her obituary in the paper, her funeral practically planned, and Fury thinking her brain was damaged, that was a disaster waiting to happen. "I have talked to the director and updated him on the situation. One of the doctors Fury's been consulting with has expressed a concern about septic shock and…."

"What?" Jemma almost shouted. "And did the director check to make sure that this doctor has an actual medical degree, and not something out of a box of those crunchy snack foods?" Septic shock? How could someone possibly think that? "Did you tell them that she's responding to treatment and her fever's coming down?" And the pictures that Coulson had asked them to take clearly showed strong , steady vitals, so how could anyone possibly thing….

"The director's been having a few bad days, and when he couldn't reach anyone here, he's been thinking the worst." Coulson said. "I know you know what you're doing. If you say that Victoria's getting better, I trust you, but to calm down Fury, do you think you could draw blood for tests?"

Blood for tests. Tests that were totally unnecessary but with the IV line in, it would be easy to draw blood without an additional needle stick. She was not going to cause Agent Hand even that small additional pain over something so ridiculous. "I will draw the blood, and Fitz can run it if it will make the director feel better, but I swear, this is unnecessary."

"I know. I know. I don't know what the doctors Fury's talking with are thinking." Well, they obviously weren't thinking about their own life expectancies if Victoria found out about this. "There's one other thing. The doctor also expressed a concern about brain damage due to the fever so now the director would like tests evaluating her brain function as well."

"The… And does the director want her DEAD?" Jemma did shout this time before bitting her lip and forcing her voice to drop. Shouting, especially shouting about this wasn't what Agent Hand needed right now, but was the director insane? "Sir, I will do the blood tests, but tests to evaluate brain function…." An EEG would be be simple and noninvasive, but some of the other tests…. And all of them would involve moving her down to medical. "We would have to move her down to medical for any additional tests and that could very well kill her. She's responding to treatment, she's getting better, but she fought so hard to stay awake, to stay alive before we found her, if she contracts a secondary infection, I'm seriously afraid that she won't have anything left to fight again. I'm not going to risk her life and expose her to who knows how many germs just to satisfy some ridiculous notion the director has in his head."

"Give him my phone number." Skye suggested. "Maybe if he calls and you explain things to him…." Why were people giving up on poor Agent Hand without knowing anything about the situation?

Before Coulson could say anything, his phone rang. "Director Fury, I was just telling Agent Simmons about your concerns. She's going to arrange blood tests, but as for the rest…."

"As for the rest, they would require moving her, and I have her isolated for a reason." Jemma called through the door, hoping that Coulson would turn his phone onto speaker so the director could hear her. "If we can prevent a secondary infection, I have every confidence that Agent Hand will come out of this fine. I am not about to drag her down to medical, a place packed with flu victims, and who knows how many other germs, and risk her life for some totally ridiculous, unnecessary and in some cases painful tests! I may not be an actual medical doctor, but I have ethics, and risking someone's life like that violates all of them."

"Is that someone at the Hub?" Banner said as he came into the office, grinning a bit at the expression of shock on Fury's face. "Maybe I ought to talk to her?"

"Be my guest. Agent Simmons, Doctor Banner would like to speak with you." And hopefully Coulson would know to keep quiet.

"Doctor Banner?" Jemma's eyes lit up for a moment at the thought of actually speaking to the scientist whose work she admired, but then she recalled the situation with Agent Hand. Was he one of the people who was giving up on her?

"Agent Simmons, right?" Bruce said. "Do you think that you can give me an update on the situation?"

"Alright. Agent Hand's temperature is still hovering at around 101, heartrate's 85, O2 levels are running between 97 and 99, blood pressure was 100 over 60 the last time I checked. I have her on a low dose of midazolam and precautionary antibiotics at the moment."

Good, those vitals sounded really good, and once more Banner wondered what in the world the doctor who had suggested possible septic shock had been thinking. "Okay, her temperature went over 106 at one point from what I've heard."

"106.7. We were locked in an overheated room at the time. But Fitz was able to get the malfunctioning heater shut down, and she started responding as soon as that was gone, and we could get some air moving around her."

106.7, not great but…. "How long would you say that her temperature was over 106?"

"Forty minutes, maybe an hour." Jemma said after taking a moment to think back. "She started responding right away when we got the heat off and got some air moving, and then once she was on an IV, and wrapped in cooling blankets, her temperature came down even more."

"Okay. And she's been semi-conscious?"

"She was semi-conscious the entire time she was running temperature that high." Jemma said.

Semi-conscious with a temperature that high? "Oriented?"

"From what I could tell, yes. What she was saying seemed to make sense to me. I did have a concern that she was seeing auras at one point. It might have been due to the headache, but that's one reason I went with the midazolam, in case it was an indication of a pending seizure."

"But there wasn't any seizure activity?"

"No, nothing, thank heavens."

"Good, that's good. What about movement?"

"She's weak, but she has moved a few times, and I didn't see any sort of abnormalities there." Jemma said. "As coordinated as you would expect from someone seriously ill with the flu. We've been able to wake her a bit to eat some ice cream. She didn't have any problems swallowing that."

"Okay. Are there any supplies you need? Tony's getting together a supply run."

"We're fine as far as medication goes, but if you could please talk to the director?"

"I'll call back in a minute." Fury took the phone back and closed the connection. "Well?"

"You need new doctors." Banner told him.

"No indication of septic shock? What about brain damage?" Fever of 106.7? How could Victoria have a chance of being normal after that?

"Her temperature going that high is a concern, but forty minutes or an hour, and the fact that she reacted to the cooling measures right away when they took away the heat source that was part of the problem? I think if she does have any sort of brain damage, you're going to be looking at the type of injury that calls for physical or occupational therapy, not the type that calls for a nursing home or a hospital."

"Thank you, Doctor Banner." Fury said with a sigh.

"No problem. When you know what equipment they need, Tony wanted me to tell you that he has a plane ready to go."

Finally something was going right. Fury signed as Banner left and he started to redial Phil.

"Therapy?" Jasper said from the doorway, stopping him in mid-dial. "Victoria's going to need therapy?"

"Therapy's a lot better than a nursing home, or a funeral." Fury muttered as he finished dialing. "And shouldn't you be doing something to make that obituary disappear?"


	28. Chapter 28

"Sir?" Coulson said as he answered the phone. He probably should apologize for how Jemma had spoke to him. Fury was under stress, after all, thinking he was about to lose a lot of good agents, but still, he had bought a COFFIN for Victoria without making sure she was dead first! He was going to be lucky if Jemma was the only one who yelled at him.

"Victoria's got a little defender there, doesn't she?" Fury said.

"Simmons and Skye have spent the last two days in Victoria's office, taking care of her and nursing her back from the brink. I don't think either one of them is willing to take any chances with her after that." Coulson said. "Sir, you need to trust Jemma, and Banner seemed to be backing her up. Victoria's getting better." As he talked, he headed back downstairs. Better to get away from Victoria's office if Fury was still going to try to demand tests. For a reason he couldn't explain, the notion of brain scans made a wave of uneasiness wash over him.

"I would like tests, but they can wait until your agent says they're safe." Fury finally agreed. And if they were looking at brain damage that might call for therapy, maybe it would be better to delay the tests a bit anyway, to see how much Victoria could bounce back on her own first? He would have to ask Banner about that possibly. "Can you get together a list of parts you need to fix whatever's going wrong at the Hub? What happened there anyway?"

"Edwin Tuttle, level 4 maintenance, is what happened." Coulson said. "Apparently he decided that the way to make level 5 was to keep maintenance costs low, and he did this by not ordering replacement parts for damage, but by pulling things from seldom used areas of the building. Fitz says he can fix the damage. He's been working with Ward and they've got a lot of the things that were critical fixed, but two thirds of the building is still without power so…."

"Is Tuttle in there?" Fury demanded. That many problems, Fury was suddenly worried about the potential for an attack once more.

"In the cafeteria, curled into a ball of flu induced misery. He's so sick that Fitz has even held off on yelling at him for the trouble he's caused." Coulson said. He spotted Fitz at the other end of the hall, half buried in an opening in the wall, with Ward handing him tools. "Fitz, the director's going to send us more parts for the repairs. Think you can get together a list of what you need?"

"I already made one, in the event that we could get some help sent." Fitz called, not pulling his head out of the wall where he was working. "Ward?"

"List is in the cafeteria. I'll go and get it." Ward said. He knew exactly what Fitz was talking about. The engineer had ranted and glared at Tuttle enough while writing it.

"Good. We'll have that list of needed parts for you in a few minutes." Coulson told him.

"What about other supplies? Meds?"

"We seem to be doing alright there. More food would be good, but having a place that isn't the BUS to prepare food would be even better so if you could just get the parts Fitz needs so we can get the building working again…."

"Right. Oh, you should know that Rogers, Stark and Banner found the man responsible for the defective shots."

"They…. Wait, someone was responsible for this?" Coulson demanded.

"Everett Dalton, works for the company who provided the shots." Fury said. "Apparently their CEO is in debt to the Maggia and has been making cuts to keep the company afloat. One of the things he cut was Dalton's paycheck, so to get even, Dalton sabotaged the flu shots."

"I hope he has a will." That was all that Coulson could think of to say in response. When Victoria found out about this, that she had been infected with the flu and had nearly died as a result, there probably wouldn't be enough of the man left to bury.

"I'm going to have Romanoff have a little talk with him. She's been locked in here for two days now, and she isn't happy." Fury smirked slightly imagining Natasha and what she would do to the man to blame for the situation.

"Make sure the video feeds are running. You know Victoria's going to want to see when she's feeling better. Here's the list." Coulson said as Ward hurried up and handed over the tablet Fitz had been writing on. He hit a few buttons and clicked send to forward it. "Sending it to your email now."

"Fine. I'll see how fast Stark's people can pull this, and then get you an ETA on delivery." Fury said before ending the call.

"Phil, did I hear you right? Someone did this, it wasn't an accident?" John called from where he was standing by the door.

"Someone at the company that supplied the vaccines apparently had a grudge against their boss, and sabotaged the shots for revenge."

"They…. Does Fury have them?" If he did, John was half tempted to head for the Triskelion to have a few words with whoever was to blame. Vic could have died so easily.

"We have him. Natasha's going to be having a little talk with Mister Dalton."

"Romanoff. I hope she doesn't turn off the video feeds. Vic's going to want to see that, if she can't have a talk with him herself." Romanoff handling it, he wasn't going to worry about the man being punished. "Did Fury say anything about if I can come in or not?" Maybe he couldn't actually see Vic, but he would feel better just being nearby in case.

"Fury said you're camping out. I'll see about finding a sleeping bag to toss out a window for you."

"Well, it won't be the worst place I've slept." John said. And he was pretty sure that he could figure out which window was Vic's. He would just wait there, until things got sorted out.

"Stark!" Fury called as he spotted Stark standing at the end of the hallway, talking with Rogers, Banner and Natasha. "I've got the list of the supplies they need at the Hub."

"What did whoever was handling maintenance do, break the entire building?" Tony said after scanning the list. "We can get all of this, but it's probably going to take five or six hours to have it ready to go."

"Fine. Hopefully they've got the things that are most likely to catch fire fixed, so they should be able to hold out until then. Have you talked to Mister Dalton yet?" he asked Natasha.

"I was just about to. Video feeds on or off?"

"On, for Victoria's viewing pleasure when she's feeling better." Fury told her.

"Are you sending her a get-well video?" Maria called as she came down the hall, carrying a bag. "Can someone drop this off for her, when your people drop off the parts?" Luckily she had paid for one day shipping on the outfit she had ordered. Victoria could probably use fresh clothes, and she would never need to know that the outfit had been originally intended for her funeral. Add a fluffy robe that she had managed to find in supplies, and that ought to help a bit with making her happier once she work up.

"Slippers, too." Jasper called as he hurried to join them with his contribution, a pair of pink bunny slippers and a large get well card. Hopefully the news would stay good, and Victoria would actually be getting well fast now.


	29. Chapter 29

She could hear voices, coming from somewhere above her. Victoria listened, and realized with relief a moment later that she could understand what they were saying. Now if she could just open her eyes. Her lashes fluttered, as she tried to order stubborn lids to move, to let her see what was going on.

"Did Agent Garrett really sleep out there all night?" Jemma asked as she and Skye looked out the window and watched John folding up his sleeping bag.

"I think so." Skye said as she waved down at him. "He was there right before it got dark, anyway, and it doesn't look like he had moved this morning."

Garrett? What was John doing here? Victoria's eyelashes fluttered more, and this time the lids slid up a bit, enough for her to realize that she was in her office, tucked into a bed on the floor, and the hacker from Coulson's team and the biochemist were standing by her window, looking down on what she could only assume was Garrett. She tried to move, but it only caused a throbbing, aching wave of pain to shoot down her body, and she involuntarily let out of weak moan. If John was here because he hadn't listened to her, and the IRS was after him, he was just going to have to go to prison. She felt too bad to even think of looking at his taxes.

"Agent Hand?" Jemma spun around and saw that Victoria's eyes were open. She hurried over and knelt down beside her. "How are you feeling, ma'am?"

"Hurts." Another throbbing, aching wave of pain washed over her, and she closed her eyes hoping if she didn't move a muscle it would help just a bit. "Garrett, what's he doing here?" Obviously Coulson's team was here to help with the flu. Of course the director would send his pet. There was no need to ask about that.

"He showed up yesterday to check on you." Skye called from the window. "He seemed pretty worried."

Pretty worried. What in the world had he done to his taxes? "How many notices from the IRS does he have?" Talking hurt too, not her throat, but the vibrations from her voice made her entire body throb more. Jail, John would just have to resign himself to jail until she felt better, and from the way she felt at the moment, better was a long way off. Jail would probably be good for him.

"The IRS? I don't see anything like that." Sky replied. "I think he's reading the Bible right now."

The Bible? John had turned to prayer? What had he tried to deduct? She had clearly told him that the last deduction he had tried to come up with was something that no amount of creative explanations would make make the IRS accept as a business expense. Obviously he hadn't listened. but if he was turning to prayer…. Were they letting the IRS execute people for irregularities now? "What did he do?" Jail was fine, but if they were planning to execute him… Victoria forced her eyes open once more and somehow ordered her arms to move, to try lever herself up. No matter how bad she felt, if they were going to execute John for screwing up his taxes, she was going to have to do something about it. The movement sent almost unbearable pain shooting down her body, and her arms gave way, sending her collapsing back onto her bed once more, with the little biochemist barely catching her in time to keep her from hitting her head.

"Ma'am, don't move. You've been very sick. You need to stay still, alright?" Jemma told her. Maybe she had lightened the sedation a bit too soon? If Agent Hand tried to move now, all she would do would make herself weaker, and possibly cause problems with her recovery.

"AC just brought breakfast around. Want to try to eat some more and then go back to sleep?" Skye added as she came over. Poor Agent Hand. It looked like even opening her eyes was painful, so why in the world had she tried to get up? "We have oatmeal, and some more ice cream."

Before either of them could say anymore, they heard a phone ringing. "It's not mine." Skye said as she looked around, and then spotted the phone, knocked into a corner. Obviously Agent Hand's. She reached out and after a moment's hesitation answered it. "Hello?"

John sighed when someone answered. Calling Vic's phone was the only think he could think of to do. When both of Coulson's girls had vanished from the window, he knew something was going on. "Is Vic awake?"

"She just woke up." Skye replied.

"That's him?" But who else would be calling her? She clearly had ordered Fury not to call. She remembered that now. "Ask him what in the world he deducted that he thinks prayer is the only solution!"

Deductions? What was she talking about? Skye and Jemma shared a look of confusion.

"Can you put her on the phone?" John asked. Vic was going to be lucky if she didn't convince those two that the fever had fried her brain like those doctors of Fury's were trying to claim. They obviously didn't know about her accounting past.

Was a phone call okay? Skye wasn't sure but she handed over the phone anyway, tucking it next to Agent Hand's ear, so she wouldn't have to move and try to hold it.

"Garrett, what did you deduct? I clearly told you that the IRS was never, ever going to buy what you were trying to claim as a business expense. You deducted it anyway, didn't you?" Throb, throb, throb. The pain was almost constant but she somehow managed to keep talking. "When is the IRS planning to execute you? I'll try to get an extension." With how she felt, maybe she could terrify them into coming through with an extension?

"Vic, the IRS isn't after me. No questionable deductions."

"You're reading the Bible, and praying. You did something."

"I came to visit a sick friend, who's been unconscious for three days with the flu. That's all I did, I swear." Probably better not to let her know that the prayers had been on her behalf. Vic still sounded like she was in major pain, and if she was letting how bad she felt slip out in her voice, he didn't want to think of how she was feeling. Letting her know she had been sick enough that he thought praying for a miracle might be her only chance, he couldn't see that doing anything good. "It's okay. You just let Coulson's kids take care of you, okay? Let them take care of you and try to go back to sleep."

"You're up to something." But sleep, at least if she slept, maybe she wouldn't hurt so much?

"Just visiting a sick friend, that's all. Come on, go back to sleep. You're not going to be able to get on your feet and yell at me when I actually DO something wrong if you don't get your rest."

"He's right. Rest is what you need." Jemma adjusted the IV and injected more medication into the port. "That ought to help a bit with the pain. Let's see if you can eat a bit, and then you can go back to sleep, alright? Really, ma'am, that's what you need to worry about right now, resting and getting your strength back."

"Vic, listen to them, okay? Let them feed you and then go back to sleep. It's going to be okay."

She felt the medicine starting to take hold, the pain easing as the urge to close her eyes and drift off washed over her. "Just don't touch anything or break my building." She ordered Garrett before giving in, letting her eyes slip closed, drifting into semi-consciousness once more as Skye coaxed a bit of the oatmeal into her. Maybe food, and when she woke up again, maybe the pain would be gone.


	30. Chapter 30

"Is that a plane?" Skye looked out the window when she heard the noise. A plane? By some miracle could the director finally be sending them help? They were managing with Agent Hand just fine with just the two of them, of course, but poor AC and Agent May, having to look after 299 people by themselves, while Fitz and Ward worked on the building, she was surprised the both of them hadn't collapsed.

"It sounds like it." Jemma agreed. She adjusted the blankets around Agent Hand and smiled slightly. They had been able to coax a good bit of the oatmeal and the ice cream as well down her, before she drifted back to sleep, curled onto her side. The amount of pain she had been in hadn't been good, of course, but Jemma was very pleased to see how alert she had been in spite of it. Give her a bit more time, and she was sure she would be as good as new. Those doctors that the director had been consulting didn't have a clue.

Definitely a plane. Not Shield though. Skye could see the Stark logo on the side as the plane touched down outside, and…. "Jemma, you aren't going to believe this!" She called. "I think that's Tony Stark!"

"Tony Stark?" Fitz was going to be over the moon to have a chance to meet him. But…. "Wait, isn't Mister Stark one of the people who thinks Agent Coulson is dead?"

"Oh, boy. But he got that thing with his heart fixed, right? It probably won't kill him to find out about the little faked death thing, will it?" Skye said.

"I hope not. I'm not entirely sure it won't kill the director, though." Jemma said as she joined Skye at the window and watched boxes being unloaded from the plane. Was that Doctor Banner she saw, and…. "Is that Captain America?"

"Who also thinks that AC's dead." Skye said. "Looks like he's going to be getting his fondest dream and a giant nightmare rolled into one today."

Coulson hurried towards the door when he heard someone pounding on it. What did John want this time? They only had oatmeal if he was wanting breakfast, and he wasn't even going to try tossing a bowl of that out the window like he had thrown the sleeping bag. Victoria would have a fit over food being spread all over her nice lawn.

But it wasn't Garrett at the door, and Coulson paled when he saw who it was. "Stark?"

"Agent?" Tony blinked, thinking he was seeing things, but no, Coulson was still there, looking surprised and more frazzled than he had imagined possible. "I sent flowers to your funeral. Who do I have to talk to about getting a refund for those?"

"What are you doing here? Does Fury know you're here?" No, if Fury knew Stark was coming in person, to drop off those supplies to fix the building, surely he would have called and warned him.

"Pepper's been saying I need to get out more. People were starting to take the fact that we're on a first name basis with everyone at the fire department and the officers on the bomb squad the wrong way. I'm not sure why. Those guys on the bomb squad are nice. They didn't say a word when we had to call them four times last week. Why aren't you dead?" Stark demanded. And why hadn't Fury or someone called and let them know that Coulson wasn't dead, preferably before he had sent flowers to the funeral, and traumatized a mortuary worker into therapy? If Fury thought he was getting access to repulser technology after pulling something like this, he could just think again. "Hey!" he shouted to Steve and Bruce, who were approaching the door. "Get over here! You won't believe what Fury did this time!"

"Agent Coulson?" Steve almost dropped the box he was holding when he saw Phil. "Director Fury showed us your cards with your blood on them. He said…."

His trading cards. Coulson winced and fought back the urge to cry just thinking of the vintage cards that Fury had runt. Okay, motivating the Avengers to save the world was important, but couldn't he have motivated them with something else soaked in blood that it hadn't taken YEARS for him to collect? He would have gladly contributed a shirt or jacket to the cause instead of his poor cards.

"Fury said. That was our first mistake, believing something Fury told us." Bruce said. "If he said it was raining, we probably should poke our heads out and double-check. Fury and the truth don't even have a passing acquaintance. Can you open the door? I'd like a chance to check on some of your agents, and talk with Agent Simmons. Have their been any changes?"

"Everyone's generally miserable, and Victoria was still sleeping the last time I checked." Coulson said as he opened the door. At least Banner seemed focused on the problem at hand, with the sick agents. That was one good thing. "Wait, what are those?" Why were some of Stark's employees carrying arrangements and pots of flowers up to the doors along with other boxes of equipment?

"Agent Sitwell asked if we could drop them off." Steve said, still looking at Coulson with a puzzled and slightly hurt look.

"Well, not us personally, since he didn't know we were coming, but you get the idea." Tony added. "He said that they took up a collection for that sick agent, Agent Hand, right? And you owe me two hundred dollars for those flowers I sent to your funeral."

"Sitwell took up a collection for get well flowers?" Well, that was probably better than ordering Victoria's tombstone.

"I don't think these started out as get well flowers." John had came around the building to see what was going on, and was checking out the floral arrangements. He pulled a ribbon off of one and waved it in the direction of the door. "Rest in Peace. You might want to check everything before you let Vic see it. I don't think she'll be thrilled to get a message like that."


	31. Chapter 31

Rest in Peace. Coulson didn't know what Jasper was thinking. He had ordered flowers for Victoria's funeral, before they even confirmed she was dead? But the ribbon John was holding definitely said rest in peace, and a couple of Stark's employees were dragging four large peace lilies to the door. Did anyone ever order a peace lily for something besides a funeral? Peace lilies. Should he let Victoria see those or would they give her a heart attack to wake up with flowers generally intended for a funeral surrounding her?

"The roses are nice. And the orchids. Aren't those expensive? She would probably like all of that." Well, maybe not the card on the arrangement of orchids that said "With Deepest Sympathy." "Hey, am I allowed in yet?"

"Not until the lockdown is lifted." Coulson said. "You don't want to risk the flu, do you?"

If the flu was bad enough that Vic was actually letting how badly she felt come through in her voice, then he really, really would rather not get it, but all of the shots Shield got couldn't possibly be defective, could they? Maybe he had got one that actually worked? And maybe he couldn't actually see Vic, but surely there was something he could do, fetching, or carrying and leaving things outside the door for her? Or diverting her grumpiness onto him instead of onto Coulson's girls once she was feeling a bit better and realized she was going to have to stay in her office on bedrest for the immediate future while things in her building were going nuts. "I'm willing to take a chance. How many defective shots could that company have sold to us?"

"Do you really want to know?" Tony said as he carried another box of supplies through the door. "Because at last count it was over 2000 shots they're saying don't provide protection and climbing."

2000 and climbing, not good, but still, how many people worked for Shield anyway? The odds had to be better than one in five that he would have got a good shot, right? Although to be on the safe side next year, he was going to follow Phil's lead and head for the local pharmacy come flu time.

"Stay outside. Sort through the flowers and make sure there aren't anymore funeral messages on them before we even think of letting Victoria see them." Coulson ordered, before waving to Stark. "This way. I think Fitz is in the cafeteria. He'll know where you need to put the supplies. He felt a cold chill wash over him as he thought of introducing Stark to the young engineer. So many ways a meeting like that could end in disaster, and possibly in a fire. "So, would you like to tell me why you had to call the bomb squad four times in one week?"

Pepper said we had to, to be on the safe side, even though I was sure that I knew how to fix the problem. And I was right, wasn't I? You haven't heard about any explosions at Stark, now have you?" Tony said.

"They might have heard about severe mental trauma amongst your staff, though." Bruce said. "Having to hear the announcement over the intercom that it's probably nothing, but to please evacuate the building in a calm, orderly manner, and then mentions of the bomb squad four times in one wepek does not help the mental health of your employees."

"But nothing blew up!" Tony said as the entered the cafeteria.

"Fitz!" Coulson called, causing the engineer to look up from where he was glaring at the still sleeping form of Edwin Tuttle between bites of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, heavy on the jelly. "We've got the supplies you need here!"

"You… Wait, you're Tony Stark!" Fitz's eyes went large as he spotted Stark and he came rushing over, practically tripping over sleeping people in his haste. Tony Stark was actually here to help them? How amazing was that?

Stark and Fitz together. Coulson felt a chill. "Fitz, you are in charge." He said. "Remember that this building belongs to Agent Hand, and she is going to want it back in one piece, so if Stark suggests trying anything to see what happens, don't do it. If he suggests trying anything and says you might need a fire extinguisher first, don't do it. Fix the building, no fancy stuff, just fix it. And Stark, I know how many limbs and fingers Agent Fitz had before you arrived. I expect him to have the same number when you leave."

"You faked your death and made me spend two hundred dollars on flowers? And now you're trying to tell me what to do again like nothing happened?" Tony complained. "I'll have you know that I've never broken a person. Except for Henderson in human resources, and that was an accident during a fire drill. What kind of person do you think I am?"

"Fitz, just remember you're young. You have a lot to live for. I'm sure I can get Victoria to help convince accounting to approve a monkey." Coulson said before turning to Bruce. "You wanted to check our people, right?"

"Talk to Agent Simmons first, and then check whoever you need me to." he said with a nod.

"What do you need me to do?" Steve asked. He was still upset about the situation with Coulson and Fury, but seeing the sick people in the cafeteria, he pushed it aside to deal with later.

"If you could take food around? There's a cart somewhere with oatmeal, bowls and a list in the hall." And maybe it would help improve morale, to have Captain America delivering their food and helping them? It would definitely improve his!

Agent May had heard the plane landing, and then the doors opening downstairs, and she was on her way down to see if the director had actually sent them some help when her phone rang. "Mom?"

"Melinda? Have you seen the paper this morning?" her mother asked.

"I've been tending sick people, and which paper?" May asked.

"The Associated Press picked it up. It's in all of the major papers. Melinda, I know you said Victoria was alive when we talked yesterday." Her mother said. She could only assume that she had taken a turn for the worse during the night. "I'm so sorry that she didn't make it. Director Fury wrote a lovely eulogy for her, though, and the President is planning to award her the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously. I think she would have appreciated that after all of her service to Shield."

"Fury…. And the president? Mom, Victoria is not dead! I think she might have even been awake a bit ago when I passed her office. I think I heard her talking." Fury had put Victoria's eulogy in the paper, and the president was giving her posthumous awards? Instead of getting this situation fixed, it was getting worse! "Mom, I'll call you back. I've got to talk to Coulson."


	32. Chapter 32

"Simmons?" Coulson called as he knocked on Victoria's door. "Doctor Banner's here."

"Doctor Banner?" Jemma said as she jumped to her feet. Would he want to come in to see Agent Hand for himself? Maybe she ought to let him? But would the gamma radiation make him safe or….

"I'll stay out here. You're doing the right thing, keeping her isolated. I don't want to do anything that might break that. How is she?"

"Much better." Jemma smiled even though they couldn't see her. "She was awake for a bit, and we were able to get her to eat a good bit of the oatmeal and the ice cream. Fever's down to 100 now."

"She was coherent, I'm guessing?" Bruce asked her.

"Very coherent. Agent Garrett even called, and she was able to talk to him on the phone for a few minutes." Jemma said. "She's still in a good bit of pain, though, so I went ahead and gave her something for that and to help her sleep."

"That's good." Bruce said. "It looks like what the two of you are doing is working. I'm assuming you aren't seeing any issues with movement?"

"She's very weak, of course, and in pain, so she isn't moving as well as she would normally, but she can move, and I didn't see any abnormalities. Do you think you can talk to the director and let him know what's really going on? I just can't see a need to put her through testing she doesn't need."

"I'll have a talk with him." Bruce promised. "In the meantime, I would just keep doing whatever you're doing."

"And if Agent Garrett calls again, let him talk to her." Coulson said. At least if he could chatter with her on the phone, maybe it would keep John from trying to find a way into the building before the lockdown was lifted. And maybe it would make Victoria feel better to be able to complain about him. It might distract her a bit from the pain of the flu, anyway. "Oh, do you think she can have flowers? The other agents sent a few things." And surely if they made sure that all of the funeral messages were gone, and disguised the peace lilies a bit, it would be okay to give them to Victoria.

"They sent flowers? How nice! Just leave them outside the door, and we can bring them in for her. I'm sure they'll make her feel much better."

"They sent some fresh clothes, and a robe and slippers too." Bruce added. "I'm not sure if she'll want to get dressed right now, but…."

"But she definitely needs something." Jemma said. She hadn't even thought of that yet. Agent Hand's original clothes had been ruined when they had converted her jacket to wet compresses and then cut the rest of her clothes away to treat her. So unless she kept a spare outfit somewhere in the building, Jemma didn't know what she was going to wear. Thank goodness someone had thought to send fresh clothes. And having a robe and slippers to cuddle up in until she felt better would be very good as well. "Just leave everything outside the door and knock!"

"It sounds good?" Coulson didn't know why he was asking, but he did anyway as they headed back downstairs so he could show Bruce the other agents.

"It sounds very good." Coherent, movements coordinated, it was possible that she might be able to get out of this without even needing physical or occupational therapy. "Want me to have a talk with Fury?"

"Please, after I have a talk with him about the flowers." Coulson said just as May approached them.

"We have a problem." She said, one eyebrow lifting slightly at the sight of the flowers filling the hallway.

"What sort of problem?" But they had Banner there to help with anything medical, they had Stark there to help fix the building, they had Captain America there to help with anything an everything.

"My mother just called. It seems that instead of arranging for a retraction of Victoria's obituary, the eulogy Director Fury wrote for her ended up in the papers instead. I read it. It's very touching. And apparently the president read either that or the obituary Jasper wrote and was very moved as well, because he's planning to give Victoria the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously."

"That might not be so bad." John called from the door. "The award looks nice, and if they think she's dead, they won't expect her to show up at a dinner and eat possible dried chicken to collect it."

"I don't think that Victoria is going to see it that way." Coulson called as he pulled out his phone and dialed Fury's number. He had already wrote a eulogy for Victoria? And it had ended up in the paper? What was everyone else in their organization thinking? "Director?"

"Coulson, did the parts from Stark get there alright?"

The parts are here. Stark's here. Doctor Banner's here, Captain Rogers is here. A bunch of flowers that have messages saying rest in peace are here. Could I ask why you wrote a eulogy for Victoria and put it in the paper? Aren't we going to have enough trouble just getting her obituary retracted without having to get a eulogy retracted too? And they're giving her the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously? What is going on?"

"We're still trying to figure out how the paper got that eulogy." Maria was at his computer now, poking and claiming he must have attached the document with the eulogy to something, but he had no clue what or how it could have happened. "How is Victoria? Still sleeping?"

"She was awake long enough to talk to John on the phone, so I wouldn't count on her napping and not finding out about this for too much longer." Coulson told him. "What are you doing to fix this?"

"I'm working on it, but… I have no idea how this happened. I know I didn't authorize this. No one here authorized this. But Victoria's funeral is scheduled for tomorrow at nine. Half the intelligence community is planning to attend. And the president. And a few prime ministers. It's going to be a big turn-out."


	33. Chapter 33

"What do you mean Victoria's funeral is scheduled for tomorrow at nine?" Coulson demanded. "She isn't DEAD! You can't have a funeral for someone who isn't DEAD!" But then this was the organization that had a service for him, so…. "You are aware that if you try to fake Victoria's death and have her funeral at nine, your funeral might be needed at ten, right?"

"They're having a FUNERAL for Vic?" John said. Had those shots everyone got for the flu been more seriously messed up than they thought? If they didn't give you the flu, possibly they caused temporary insanity? Or suicidal tendencies, which planning a funeral for Vic when she was still alive and in major pain from the flu surely counted for. But he had had the shot, and he felt normal. Maybe someone needed to check the water at the Triskelion?

"I don't know how it happened." Fury said. "I didn't authorize this. No one here authorized this. I've only talked to the mortuary one time, to make sure that they would be able to handle a possible worst case scenario with 150 bodies to process. I certainly didn't tell them to go ahead and schedule any funerals! We didn't even have bodies! Why would I schedule a funeral without bodies?"

"It hasn't stopped you before, and I ought to know." Coulson said. "What are you doing to fix this?"

"I've got a call in to the funeral home. I've got a call in to the White House. I haven't heard back from either one yet. Maria's trying to figure out how that eulogy got out. I swear I didn't send that thing to anyone!" Fury felt like beating his head against the wall in frustration. "How is Victoria?" he asked again.

"Resting for the moment, her fever's down to 100, but like I said she was awake earlier and was actually able to talk to John on the phone." Coulson told him. "She's still in pretty severe pain so Jemma gave her something to make her comfortable and let her rest."

"Resting. Tell Agent Simmons to make sure Victoria gets a lot of rest right now." Fury said. Would Coulson's little biochemist have a clue how to put someone into a medically induced coma? He was halfway tempted to ask about that.

"She's not going to agree to keep Victoria drugged into unconsciousness just to keep her from finding out about this." Coulson said. "How did this happen? Funeral homes can't just schedule a service without authorization or a body!"

"Apparently when the White House starts calling and asking about the service, since the president plans to attend, they can." Maria called. "And Director, it looks like you accidentally attached Victoria's eulogy to that message you sent to the WSC, updating them on what's going on."

"So they didn't read the actual message I sent, that the sick agents are recovering, they just opened the attachment and decided to forward it to the paper?" Fury demanded. But then these were the people who nearly dropped a nuclear bomb on Manhattan. Why would he expect reasonable behavior out of them?

"Does it matter how it got in the paper?" Coulson demanded. "How are you going to fix it?" They would be lucky if Victoria didn't have a heart attack if she found out about all of this. Maybe he ought to ask Jemma to sedate her heavily for awhile? A heart attack surely wouldn't be good for her health, right?

"We're working on it. We're working on it." Fury said.

"Hey," Jasper called as he came in, for once the bell around his neck actually dinging. "Did you know that people are sending tributes to Victoria in to the papers? There must be a hundred of them by now, and that's just in the Washington Post."

"That MI-13 agent who torched her desk during flu season sent something nice." John said as he pulled up the paper on his phone. "And those two people who live in the basement over at at the FBI. Maybe Vic will like it, that people are saying nice things about her for a change?"

"They all think she's dead!" Coulson glared at John for a moment before focusing on the phone. "How long is it going to take to fix this? And Jasper, could I ask why you sent Victoria flowers saying Rest in Peace?"

"Rest in Peace?" Jasper paled. "They said Rest in Peace? They weren't supposed to say Rest in Peace!" He pulled out his phone and checked the message he had sent to the florist. "Get Some Rest. That's what I told the florist to put on them. Get Some Rest, Sorry you're Sick. Feel Better Fast!" How could they have got Rest in Peace from that?

"There were ribbons all over them saying Rest in Peace and With Deepest Sympathy." John called, still reading tributes from the paper as he talked. "But other than that, I think Vic will really like them."

"Double check the plants, please?" Jasper moaned. "Triple check them!" What had the florist done? Victoria would either kill him or have a heart attack if she woke up to funeral flowers all over her office. "Phil, could Agent Simmons please, please give Victoria something to keep her asleep for awhile? She probably needs the rest anyway, right?"

Coulson sighed, but he was going to have to talk with Jemma. If Victoria found out about this when she was still so sick, it wouldn't be good for her. Maybe a bit stronger sedation was in order. "But you are working on fixing this, right?"

"We're trying, if we could get someone to return a few calls." It seemed like every line he had tried so far had either been busy, or had been answered by someone who stuck him on hold for an eternity, and then cut off the call.

"What about Vic's family?" John asked. "Someone's let them know that she's okay, haven't they?"

"I made a few calls yesterday." May said. But what if Victoria's family saw the eulogy and the announcement that the funeral had been scheduled, and assumed like her mother did that Victoria had taken a turn for the worse and had died during the night? She scrolled through her recent calls and hit a number, worry washing over her when she got a busy signal with both that number and the other four she had called the night before. "We might have a problem. I can't get through to her family."

"Maybe the papers all calling them to get them to say some nice things about Vic for the front page? She made the front page. And that's a really good picture they have of her. Bet she'll get a date out of it." John called. "You ought to make this her photo for her Shield ID. It looks like she's actually laughing in it."

"I hope their phones are busy because the papers are calling them for quotes." Coulson said. "Director, do you think that you can get someone to go talk to her family, to be on the safe side, though?" What if the shock of this situation had given them all heart attacks?

Get someone out there. With the lockdown, Fury wasn't sure how he would find someone to go and talk to Victoria's family, but he would have to try. Maybe Stark could spare someone? "Wait, did you say that Stark is there?"

"Yes, he's here. He isn't happy with you. I'll handle him. Just get this mess with Victoria straightened up fast!"


	34. Chapter 34

No sooner had Fury ended the call with Coulson than Jasper's phone rang.

"Jasper?" Felix said as soon as he picked up and put it on speaker. He hesitated, really not wanting to ask this. Victoria had been fine, Coulson had said she was doing fine, and it sounded like she was well on the way to recovery the day before, but when he had seen the paper this morning…. Pneumonia, maybe? She would be at high risk for that after how high her fever had went. Had pneumonia set in and caused her to slip away during the night? But why hadn't anyone called to tell him? She was his friend too! "Victoria, the article in the paper this morning, is she…." The president said he was attending her funeral, though. Wouldn't the president have to have had her death confirmed before he made plans like that? "What happened? She was getting better!"

"She still is. Temperature's down to 100 and she was able to talk to John on the phone." Jasper said.

"What?" Felix's jaw dropped at the news. At first he had wanted to believe it was another mistake, but the president said he was attending Victoria's funeral, and there was an eulogy from Fury in the paper. "Director, you put her eulogy in the paper, and she isn't…."

"I apparently attached the eulogy to a message updating the WSC on the fact that the sick agents are recovering, and we caught the person responsible for the defective shots. Only the WSC being the geniuses they are, skipped reading my message entirely and decided to forward the eulogy to the Washington Post instead." Fury still couldn't believe they had done that. He knew that the people on the WSC weren't the brightest, they had tried to bomb Manhattan after all, but he had clearly labeled that message a positive update! How could they not figure that there was a fast difference between a message title with positive clearly spelled out and an attached eulogy for one of his level 8 senior agents? Anyone with any common sense would have thought to call and double-check instead of forwarding the thing to the newspapers.

"She's… What are you going to do about getting this mess straightened out then?" Felix asked. "Her funeral is scheduled for tomorrow! How did they plan her funeral without a body? And with all of Shield in lock-down?"

"I wish I knew what the funeral home was thinking." Fury muttered. "We're working on getting things straightened out, if a few people would take my calls." He looked at his clock. Ten now, They had less than twenty-four hours to get this fixed and get that funeral cancelled.

"The funeral might not be the biggest problem we have." Maria said as she put her phone down and looked at him with worry plain in her eyes. "I pulled up the information on Victoria's family and tried them myself. I'm not getting an answer, and when I checked I spotted a message about the police and an ambulance being dispatched."

"We killed her family?" Jasper moaned. Victoria was going to be furious when she found out they had given her up for dead and had been planning her funeral, but if they had killed her family… How could they ever tell her? Victoria was…. Well, she was Victoria, but waking up and finding out that your entire family was killed by incorrect bad news while you were sleeping off the flu, first she would kill them and then she would probably end up in a mental institution for the rest of her life from the trauma. "What have we done?"

"It might not be that bad. There are reporters trying to get an interview with her family. I saw them swarming like vultures on GNN." Felix said from the phone. "Possibly one or more of them managed to have an accident that called for an ambulance, and hopefully for a long stay in jail afterwards."

Let it be the reporters. Let it be an injured reporter or a dead reporter. Fury had no clue how he would ever break it to Victoria if her family was dead thanks to an insane mix-up.

"We need to get someone out there to let them know she's okay. Can't we drop the lock-down? We know what happened with the shots." Jasper asked.

"We know what happened, but we're still not sure which agents are vulnerable and which agents are safe." Fury picked up his phone and dialed a number. "Ms. Potts, this is Director Nick Fury."

A moment later he held the phone away from his ear. Apparently Stark had already called and updated her on the Phil situation. "Ms. Potts? Yes, I understand that you're upset about the situation with Agent Coulson. I will be happy to explain the entire situation later but…."

"Oh, I'm just dying to hear the explanation for faking Coulson's death and lying about it." a voice from the door said, and Fury looked up to find Natasha standing there, with a look on her face that would have dropped most men dead in their tracks.

Dead, he was definitely dead. And after the mess he had made, he was fairly sure he deserved it. "Could you at least let me arrange for someone to check and make sure Victoria's family know she's okay before you do whatever you're going to do?" And if something had happened to them due to the false reports of her demise, maybe Natasha killing him would be quicker than what Victoria would do once she found out that she had been rendered an orphan.


	35. Chapter 35

"She's really going to have to stay in here eight or ten days?" Skye asked Jemma as the two of them tried to find places to set all of the flowers. What had Agent Sitwell done, bought out a florist's shop? Shouldn't he have avoided buying peace lilies, though? Those were funeral flowers, she was sure.

"To be on the safe side, yes." Jemma said. "I think she's out of immediate danger, but I want to make sure she's past the risk of a secondary infection as well. The fever's left her exceptionally vulnerable to that. I can tend her on my own, though, if…."

"No, it's not that. And it seems like she's being a cooperative sick person, not a big, scary, feverish bear like I was expecting. I was just wondering if we ought to be figuring out some way to keep her entertained? She's feeling awful now, I know, but I'm betting pretty soon she's going to get to the point where you're feeling better, but still not good enough to get out of bed, so you're stuck and going nuts. Do you think we could get AC to find a TV and some movies or something?"

Entertainment. Jemma hadn't thought of entertainment, but if they were going to be sharing a sickroom with Agent Hand for that long, she probably should have. If they didn't have a distraction to offer her when she was feeling a bit better, she would probably want to try getting back to work, much too soon. "Movies might be good, or a book? Do you have any books on your phone? I really wish I remembered where I left mine."

"I've got something, I can find your phone for you when we get out here. As for books, what do you think she might like?" Skye asked as she connected to the internet. She doubted that Agent Hand would be impressed by some of her book choices, but surely she could find something that would work. Amazon had about a million books of all categories. Surely they had a category for literature suitable for a rule-abiding, sick superior officer.

Twitter was going crazy as Skye started to open the bookstore app, and out of curiosity she clicked that first and a moment later she turned to Jemma and shoved the phone at her. "Look." She didn't know what else to say. "Just look."

"What?" Jemma's jaw dropped and her eyes went wide. "A eulogy? By Director Fury?" He wrote a eulogy for Agent Hand? What was he thinking? He knew she was recovering and… Anger washed over her. First he had tried to insist on tests that could have endangered Agent Hand or possibly killed her, and now he had put her EULOGY in the newspaper and on Twitter? Had their leader lost his mind?

Skye took the phone back without Jemma noticing, and opened her browser. "Jemma, this is bad." She whispered a moment later. "She's really asleep for the moment, right?"

"She was in so much pain, I gave her a bit stronger dosage. She should sleep for at least a good six hours before needing something else." Jemma nodded. Agent Hand had been hurting so much, and she had fought so hard, had somehow survived something that would have likely killed or severely damaged most people, and the Director had…. If Agent Hand woke up and found out about this now, the damage the shock could cause…. Was Director Fury trying to KILL her?

"I'm calling AC." Skye pulled up his phone and dialed.

"Skye?" Coulson said as he answered the call. "What's…."

"Agent Hand's fine. She's fast asleep. But could you please tell me why when I went online to try to find a book or something to keep her occupied while she's stuck in bed, I found her obituary and a eulogy by the head of our organization trending on Twitter? And her funeral is scheduled for tomorrow? Is there a reason that Shield keeps wanting to have funerals for people who aren't dead yet? Did someone maybe misunderstand the concept of pre-planning a funeral? Because if they did, I am suddenly rethinking the entire becoming an agent thing. I don't want to know what else they could have misunderstood." If they thought it was fine to have your funeral before you were dead, what if they thought burying you before you were dead was a great idea?

"I was going to come up there and talk to you about what's going on." Coulson said. "How's Victoria?"

"Sleeping, which is a really, really good thing, since someone at the White House is giving a press conference about her death right now." Skye said as she flipped to a news website streaming the conference live. They were saying really nice things about Agent Hand and her devotion to Shield, but they were also talking about her tragic death, so she doubted the senior agent would be very impressed.

"Sir, what is going on?" Jemma demanded, taking the phone away from Skye "If Agent Hand finds out about this…. She's not in danger at the moment, but she's still incredibly weak. Do you know the damage a shock like this could do to her? She needs rest and peace to get her strength back not…. Something like this could kill her!"

"We know. We know." Coulson said. A press conference? The White House was giving a press conference on Victoria instead of answering the director's calls to let them know she wasn't dead? How in the world was Fury going to fix this. "The director's working on fixing this. It's just a matter of time before he has it corrected, but until then…. Victoria's asleep. How long is she going to sleep, do you think?"

"The current dose should keep her sleeping for at least six hours. Sir, what is the director thinking? He doesn't have the flu to, does he? And possible hallucinations?" Illness was the only explanation Jemma could come up with for how the situation had occurred, either illness or a mass outbreak of insanity.

"He's probably wishing he had the flu right now. Just for the moment, can you make sure Victoria says asleep? Fury's working on it, and things should be fixed soon but until then…"

"I will, but not for the director's sake. Agent Hand doesn't need the trauma hearing about this would cause her." Jemma agreed after a moment. "But please, get this fixed soon!"

"We're working on it. And I'll tell John to call. Hopefully he'll have some ideas for ways to entertain Victoria, as soon as this is fixed and it's safe for her to actually be awake."

"The director is working on fixing this." Jemma told Skye after ending the call.

"Good." Skye sat down on the floor by Victoria and Jemma sat on her other side. "He better figure out a way to fix it fast." As she talked, she reached out and gently brushed a strand of the oddly colored red hair away from Agent Hand's face. Even with the fever down, she looked so small and sick still from the pain. If she found out about what was going on, Skye didn't want to imagine what damage it would do.


	36. Chapter 36

"Romanoff let you live?" Maria asked as Fury came limping down the hallway.

"And you still have an eye." Jasper added. "Is she feeling okay? She's not coming down with the flu, is she, because lockdown or not, I am not staying in the same building as Natasha Romanoff with the flu."

"She seems to feel that Agent Barton should have the first shot at me." Fury grumbled. "And I appreciate two of my senior agents fleeing at the slightest hint of danger so much."

"I think Victoria has the first shot at killing me, when she finds out about that obituary." Jasper said with a wince. "I wouldn't want to let Romanoff get me first and deny her the pleasure."

"Speaking of Victoria, have you heard anything about her family yet?" Maria asked. "I've been checking the news reports, but all they're showing are ambulances, and the police running everywhere. They're not even making wild speculation about what might have happened yet."

"Ambulances? As in more than one?" Fury said. More than one ambulance? How many relatives did Victoria have?

"Three so far." Maria said after checking the footage streaming on her phone. "And what looks like every fire truck and police car for a three county area."

Not good. Ambulances, fire trucks, the police. Wait, the police. "Have you tried contacting the police and explaining the situation to them?" He asked Maria. Surely the police would be willing to assist them in passing along the news that Victoria was okay.

"I tried the police. I tried the fire department. I hope no one else has a fire or needs to report a crime today, because the lines were busy at both places. I even tried the local 911. They're busy too."

"We killed them, didn't we?" Jasper moaned. It was finally sinking in, the damage that their giving up on Victoria had caused. It had been bad enough thinking about how she would take the news. Finding out that her friends and fellow agents had given her up for dead, instead of trying to help her, was going to be bad enough. Victoria would be rightfully mad and hurt over that, but if they had hurt or worse killed her family…. "I'm going to go ahead and start writing my obituary now. Apparently I'm pretty good at that. Do either of you want me to handle yours while I'm writing?"

"We're not assuming her family's dead yet. We assumed that with Victoria and look at where it got us." Fury said just as his phone rang.

"Director Fury?" Pepper said as soon as he answered. "This is Pepper Potts."

"Ms. Potts." She still sounded mad, but not as upset as she had been before. Possibly that was either a good sign, or she had managed to talk to Coulson, and he had calmed her down. "Were you able to…."

"I dispatched someone from our closest office to talk to your poor agent's family and let them know that Shield is apparently ran by idiots who apparently think it's perfectly fine to plan funerals for people who aren't dead. What's next, burying them before they're dead?"

"I can reassure you that Shield has never buried anyone who was not dead. In recent memory."

"Wait, what about Agent Hopkins?" Jasper said.

"That was an accident. And we dug him up. He was fine."

"I wouldn't say fine. He still runs screaming at the sight of a shovel." Maria muttered.

"I don't want to know. Just if Tony ever drops over while he's with you, just ship him back to me and let me deal with it. Or Natasha. Or…. Never mind. Why don't you just let me take dealing with your dead people, or people you think could possibly be dead at some point off your hands entirely. I think it might work out better that way." Pepper said. "Director, I think you have a serious problem with your agent's family. The police have the entire area blocked off, and my people couldn't even begin to get close. No one's saying anything officially about what's going on, and I wouldn't trust what the reporters were speculating on, but the report I got back was that the coroner had been called out. You really need to get someone official down there to find out more. The police aren't going to answer questions for someone from Stark, but they would pretty much have to for Shield, right?"

"Shield is in lockdown at the moment, though, due to the defective flu shots." Fury said. Coroner. I couldn't believe this. How had the situation gotten so far out of hand? Just a few days ago he thought the worst thing he was going to be dealing with was a sick and cranky Victoria and now this.

"Garrett got out of the lockdown. Maybe someone else would be willing to do the same?" Maria said.

"Or you could call Barton. He's not locked down." Natasha said as she came in.

"How did Barton avoid the lockdown?" Fury demanded.

"He was out getting schwarma when everything went into lockdown and he couldn't get back in. Is that a coroner's van? What did you do this time?" Natasha asked as she looked at the footage still streaming on Maria's phone.

"Hopefully not what we're afraid we might have done. Ms. Potts, I appreciate your assistance."

"If you appreciate my assistance, then maybe you'll do me a favor and learn something from this. Telling people their friends and family are dead when they're not is a BAD IDEA!"

If only she knew how bad an idea it was. The director ended the call and pulled up Barton's number. He just hoped that it hadn't turned into a truly disastrous one.


	37. Chapter 37

"So that's Edwin Tuttle?" Tony asked as he and Fitz drug more parts into the kitchen, to try to get it operational again. If they couldn't get that up, Tony didn't want to think of what he was going to be eating tonight. Probably a bowl of oatmeal. It seemed like that was the primary thing getting fixed around here.

"That's him." Fitz said with a glare in the direction of the ill maintenance man.

"Breaking an entire building. You know, I've done a few things before, but I don't think I've managed to break an entire building before. Well, I've crashed through a few buildings and they might have fallen down afterwards, but that isn't the kind of breaking I was talking about." Tony said. He probably shouldn't let Pepper know about how bad the damage was. She would likely try to say he was bound to get bad ideas. And thinking about Pepper… "So any idea where this idiot went to school? I want to make sure we don't hire anyone from there. It sounds like they must have got the definitions of fixing and breaking confused."

"He definitely didn't learn that at any Shield academy." Fitz glared at the man again. "And what he did down in the lab in the basement, wait until you see that. It's a wonder that Agent Hand didn't die." And remembering the sight of Jemma crying, thinking there was nothing she could do to save her, it was all that Fitz could do to control his anger. "When Agent Hand gets her hands on him…." What was the penalty for nearly killing a superior officer with poor work ethics? "He'll be heading off on a suicide mission for sure."

From what I've heard about Agent Hand, I wouldn't doubt it." Tony said as the two went into the kitchen. "You're probably going to have to find a new director if she ever finds out about that coffin he bought for her."

"Director Fury bought Agent Hand a coffin? Why would he do that?" Fitz asked in puzzlement.

"Who knows. I'm still trying to figure out why he told us all Coulson was dead. Okay, alien invasion, needing us to work together to save the world, I can kind of get that, but after? I sent two hundred dollars in flowers to that funeral, and Pepper cried for months!" That was one thing that was really ticking him off. Fury lied, it was what he did, but when one of those lies hurt Pepper, and made her sob for months on end at the slightest reminder of Coulson, that was where Tony drew the line. Lie to him, hurting him and yes he could admit to himself that Coulsn't supposed death had hurt, well, that was one thing, but hurting Pepper, Fury had gone too far with that.

"A coffin, though? At least Agent Coulson was almost fatally injured. Agent Hand's been sick with the flu." True, she had came close to dying from the fever and probable heatstroke thanks to that idiot Tuttle, but how would the director know anything about that?

"It was a nice coffin. I have contacts at the mortuary Shield uses. That's how I heard about it. I think they're afraid of me for some reason." He studied the dark kitchen, only lit by an electric work light they had brought with him. "You know, this has possibilities. I think I could make a few modifications here, and automate some stuff. It would really improve things."

"No improvements." Coulson said as he came in. He knew this was going to happen. Stark was going to get some sort of grand plan in his head that could only lead to disaster. "Fix what Tuttle broke so we can get the power back on. We're having to feed 300 people out of the kitchen on the BUS. We don't need improvements. We need the power on again."

"But it wouldn't take long at all." Stark said as if he hadn't heard Coulson. "I'm thinking a robot. That would really streamline things, and make feeding everyone go so much faster." Not that he had a clue about anything related to the preparation of food, but he was sure he could make a food preparing robot work anyway. How had could it be?

"Or a monkey. But I suppose some people might have issues with a monkey around their food." Fitz said. "A robot would probably be better. And if we automated the stoves…."

"No! No, you are not building robots. You're not automating anything! Just fix things and et the power back on!" Coulson ordered. But Stark had that maniacal look in his eyes, and he was suddenly very, very afraid. How was he going to explain to Victoria if she woke up and her building had been invaded by a host of Stark constructed robots? "Fitz?" Maybe if he appealed to the engineer. "Remember that monkey? We need Victoria to convince Accounting to sign off on it. If her building is damaged, or taken over by robots…"

"We're not damaging anything. We're improving things!" Stark declared just as his phone beeped. He pulled it out, and saw a text from Pepper.

_I don't know what Phil's number is. Will you show this to him please? And whatever you are thinking of doing to poor Agent Hand's building, stop thinking about it at once. That poor woman has enough problems without you adding to them._

"Oh, boy. Agent, you might want to take a look at this." Stark said after he clicked on the link.

"Congress?" Coulson took the phone and watched the streaming feed in horror. Congress had taken time out of making laws to dedicate the day to giving speeches about Victoria, her tragic death, and her devoted service to protecting the world?

"What's going on?" May said as she came in, and saw the look on Coulson's face. She moved over to his side, and looked at the scene playing on his phone. "Is that Congress?"

"Why are they saying something about giving Agent Hand a gold medal, posthumously?" Fitz asked. "Doesn't posthumous mean after you're dead? She's not dead!"

"Congressional Gold Medal. It looks nice anyway." Tony offered. "And they're saying nice things about her. I'm expecting the things that they might say about me when I die to be x-rated."

"Is Fury even trying to fix this?" May demanded. The news of Victoria's supposed death seemed to be spreading and she was getting very concerned that she hadn't been able to reach her family to let them know that Victoria was okay, and sleeping off a terrible case of the flu.

"Yes, but he's not having much luck." And half of Congress apparently planned to be at the funeral scheduled for Victoria. Was it even possible to correct the situation at this point?

"I just hope no one's watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail." Fitz said. "It might give them the idea that the easiest way to fix this is to whack Agent Hand over the head so she doesn't miss her funeral after all."

"Fury wouldn't." May said.

"Congress doesn't like to be made fools of." Tony said. "Believe me, I know. And wouldn't it be kind of embarrassing for them to find out that they're making a fuss about someone who's alive and just has a bad case of the flu?"

"What?" a voice called from the cafeteria and suddenly John Garrett came pushing his way in. Had he heard someone suggesting that people might think it would be easier to kill Vic than to try to straighten out this entire mess with everyone thinking she was dead? "Phil…."

"Didn't I tell you to stay outside?" Coulson demanded.

"I heard you talking through the window." And he might have damaged a window getting in. But surely there was some glass somewhere that could fix that right up. "You don't think someone might really try to do something to Vic, do you?"

"We are on lock-down. I'm sure we don't need to worry. No one is supposed to go in or out of a lock-down, except you've somehow failed to grasp that concept, haven't you?" But John was in here, and already exposed to the flu. It was too late to do anything about it now, except hope he had gotten a flu shot that worked. "Go find Captain Rogers, and help him feed sick people. You wanted in here so badly, you're going to work. And don't complain to me if you get the flu!"


	38. Chapter 38

Fury looked down when his phone rang, and for a moment debated not answering it. It seemed like every time he did, it was to receive word of some new disaster. But Barton's name was flashing on the screen, and he dared to hope that this call might be good news. "Barton, please tell me you talked to Victoria's family!" He demanded as soon as he answered the phone.

"Good news, really bad news. Which do you want first?" Clint said.

He debated asking for the really bad news and getting it over with before deciding it would be nice to hear something good. "Good news."

"Good news is that as of two hours ago, Agent Hand's grieving family was fine." Clint said. "A reporter fell and broke his neck trying to climb up a tree. That's what the coroner was here for."

"Fine." Fury let out a sigh of relief. Victoria's family hadn't dropped over dead of shock. Good news. Very good news. "So you let them know that she's okay?"

"That's the bad news." Clint said. "The very bad news. As of two hours ago, they left to head to Agent Hand's funeral. I finally found a neighbor who I was able to convince I was not a reporter who let me know where they were. And they are not happy with you and the fact that they were notified about Agent Hand's death through the newspapers and waking up to reporters on the lawn. I believe lawsuits might have been mentioned."

Lawsuits. Perfect. He wasn't sure what Victoria's family thought they could sue him for. She wasn't dead and she was an adult. It was up to her to call her family and let them know she was sick with the flu. But a lawyer could probably think of something. Still, maybe they would be easier to get through to if they were in a hotel so he could let them know Victoria was okay.

"And speaking of people who aren't dead," Clint said. "Natasha had something very interesting to share with me about Coulson. Would you like to give me one good reason I shouldn't put an arrow in a place where the sun doesn't shine the next time I see you? I would kill you, but I think there are a few ladies who have dibs on that."

Fury paused. His first instinct was to lie or twist things, but…. As strange as it felt, maybe the trust or at least part of the truth might work better this time. And now that Stark knew, he would be poking away at Shield until he found out. Better people heard it from him. "What we had to use to save Coulson hadn't been perfected yet. It has some potential serious side effects. We tried to get around that with a memory modification, but encountering the lot of you might have broken through that."

"You used a drug that wasn't perfected on Coulson? A drug with side effects? What side effects?" Clint demanded.

"Metal breakdown. Possible insanity." Fury said.

"But he's fine?"

"As far as we know he is right now thanks to the memory modification." Fury said.

"Okay, but you still used a drug with side effects on him? And did it never occur to you that Banner and Stark are GENIUSES? Stark's even got a tattoo that says genius on his rear end! If they knew about this and about the side effects, here's a wonderful idea, maybe they could FIX IT! I'm not sure if you should be in charge of something like Shield if you couldn't figure that one out. I'm not sure you should be in charge of operating the ice machine at a hockey game if you can't figure that one out."

"Thank you very much for your opinion." Fury muttered. And why did he think he was going to be hearing that opinion four more times, or possibly five more if the rumors that Thor was on Earth somewhere were true?

"Just repeating what everyone else is going to be telling you, and Fury, if there's a chance, any chance at all that Coulson could get those side effects, stop with the lying. I know he can be annoying and will gloat forever, but tell Stark everything, and let them FIX IT!"

"He's probably right." Maria said from the door as Fury ended the call. "We probably should have done that from the beginning."

But doing that would have meant that Coulson would find out everything, including the fact that he had wanted the GH project stopped, and Fury had ignored him.

"Did I hear you right?" Jasper said. "You gave Phil something that might make him go insane?"

How did Sitwell keep doing that, popping up at his door without making a sound? That bell had to be defective.

"Sitwell, what are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to be working on getting someone from that funeral home on the line so we can pull the plug on this thing with Victoria!"

"I was. The lines are jammed. And I thought you might want to know that someone from Britain's royal family is rumored to be planning to be at the funeral tomorrow. I hope one of the good ones, not some count that they dug up out of the mothballs for funeral attending duty. Victoria deserves someone important."

"Victoria isn't dead. You remember that, right?" Maria said.

"I know, but still, she deserves for them to send someone good." Jasper said. "And about Phil, Director, if you thought he was about to lose his mind, why weren't you on the phone to Stark to try to fix it? Or Banner? He's smart too. And for someone with a green rage monster inside him surprisingly well mannered. If something's wrong with whatever you used, wouldn't it make sense to get them in, to fix it?"

"Let's focus on fixing this thing with Victoria first, and then I can think about consulting Banner and Stark. Jasper, get back on the phone. I don't care how long it takes, get someone at that funeral home on the line and tell them to call everything off! Maria…."

"I'll start calling hotels and try to find Victoria's family." Maria said.

"And I'm going to try to get someone at the White House. At the rate they're going, they're going to shut down everything and declare a national day of mourning next!"


	39. Chapter 39

Agent May's mother looked around the packed gathering, searching for any sign of her daughter or Coulson. Surely they were here somewhere. She knew Melinda had said that Victoria was alive, and recovering, but the president was there, two thirds of Congress were there, she had seen several prime ministers and other foreign government officials. Representatives from all of the intelligence agencies were there, which is what had lead to her attendance. She swore she had spotted several of the little English princesses being escorted in by that scruffy agent from MI-13. But where in the world was Melinda? She didn't want to try to make her way through the crowds to speak to Victoria's family, who were clustered by the closed casket, grief and shock apparent on their faces, until she had found her daughter.

After a moment more of scanning the crowds, and realizing that the service was going to start soon, she stepped to the side, into an alcove, pulled out her cell phone and dialed. Hopefully she would be able to get through this time, unlike the numerous calls she had made the night before.

"Melinda, where are you?" she said as soon as her daughter picked up.

"At the Hub, tending sick people, where I've been for the last…." Was it four days they had been here, nursing all of the sick agents? It felt like it had been a whole lot longer. "Why do you sound like you expected me to be somewhere different?"

"You're not at Victoria's funeral?" her mother said in surprise. She couldn't believe her daughter hadn't found a way to make it to the service.

"Victoria's…. Mom, I told you when you called to tell me about the eulogy that Victoria was fine!" Hadn't Fury found a way to get that funeral cancelled? What was going on?

"I know you said that but after the press conference…." Her mother looked towards the front of the room. A woman she assumed was Victoria's grandmother was gently stroking the closed lid of the coffin and softly sobbing. Why would her family be here, reacting like this if Victoria wasn't gone? "Her poor family. They look devastated."

"Victoria's family is…" At least they weren't dead of heart attacks. May tried to comfort herself with that thought as she hurried through the hallways looking for Coulson. What in the world was going on? How had Fury let things go this far?

"I think it must be her grandmother who keeps touching the coffin. You should be here, Melinda. Why don't I see anyone from Shield here?"

"Because we're on lockdown and Victoria might kill anyone who attends her funeral when she isn't dead?" May said.

"Melinda, don't play these games. Making light of death isn't seemly." her mother said sternly. "I see Director Carter. At least someone from your organization is showing proper respect."

"Director…." Someone had gone to the nursing home and got their former leader, and drug her off to the funeral of someone who wasn't dead? "Mom, listen to me, Victoria is fine! Or as fine as someone can be while recovering from a particularly nasty case of the flu. She's in her office, she's sleeping, two of our agents are hovering at her bedside to take care of her. She's fine! I think John just took something up to her for breakfast! Mom, please, I need you to get to her family. I need you to tell them that she's okay. Mom…. Pictures. Coulson has pictures of her." And there he was, just coming out of the cafeteria. "I'll have him send you pictures of Victoria. Get to her family and show the pictures to them. Let them know she's okay."

"Pictures?" Was her daughter serious, that Victoria really wasn't dead? She was starting to think that she just might be, but…. "The music is starting." She told her, as the people who were still standing started to take their seats and she saw Victoria's family being led to the front row, her grandmother only reluctantly letting go of the coffin. "If you have pictures, send them. I'll try to talk to them after the service."

"What's wrong?" Phil asked as he hurried up. "Who was that on the phone?"

"My mother. She's at Victoria's funeral and called to see why we weren't there." May said. "Victoria's family is there. Director Carter is there."

"Roughly 3000 people are there." Tony said as he came out, tablet in hand and flipped it so they could see the live stream from the funeral that had just started. "It looks like standing room only."

"Are those Victoria's grandparents?" Coulson asked as he looked closely at the group seated in the front row, clinging to each other and sobbing as they stared at the coffin they had no clue was empty.

"I think so. Her grandfather just turned a hundred." The look on her grandparents' faces, if Victoria ever found out about this…. "That isn't the funeral home Shield uses. Where are they having it?"

"National Cathedral. They must have moved it when everyone who's anyone in government decided to attend. Standing room only. And it looks like she's got a whole lot of nice flowers." Tony said.

"But she's not DEAD!" Coulson shouted. At least Victoria was sleeping safely in her office. That was the one good thing he could see at the moment. She was asleep, and if they were lucky, would never have to know about this disaster.


	40. Chapter 40

John checked the tray of food one more time. Oatmeal, with bananas mashed up for ease of swallowing, making the thing a bit like a pudding. Dish of ice cream with sprinkles. Glasses of apple juice and some milk he had finally found in the fridge on Coulson's plane, hidden behind half of the things in the fridge to prevent it from being easily spotted. And it had taken him forever, but he had even figured out how to fold the napkin into the shape of a rabbit. Vic would probably figure that he had gone insane when she saw that, but hopefully it would make her feel better. And from the bags of fresh foods that Starks people had brought in to replace the stuff lost when the power to the kitchen had to be cut, he had fresh breakfast sandwiches for Coulson's girls.

"I have breakfast." He called as he knocked on the door. "How's Vic?"

"Still sleeping." Jemma replied. They had been able to wake her once the night before, and had coaxed broth and more ice cream down her, but she had been in so much pain that Jemma had gone ahead and given her a stronger dose of the pain medication to try to keep her comfortable. She probably wouldn't even remember breakfast five minutes after they fed her with what she was on, which was probably a good thing under the circumstances. She had never seen a flu virus that was this bad in her life, and then there was the other issue with the unnecessary funeral that Agent Hand definitely did not need to know about. "Just leave the food at the door."

"Right." John debated stepping back and hoping to catch a glimpse of Vic when the door opened, but then his phone rang, and stopped him. "Hello? Trip? Wait, what's going on?" He said when he answered and was greeted by the specialist's voice, sounding frantic. "What do you mean your grandmother's vanished?" Director Carter was missing? How in the world had she gone missing? Wasn't someone from Shield supposed to be at her nursing home keeping an eye on her? "Okay, calm down. She's got to be somewhere. She's ninety-seven. How far could she go? Does your Cousin Sharon know what's going on? Yeah, forgot about the lock-down." Something he wasn't paying any attention to, it was easy to forget. "What's the nursing home saying?"

"Agent Garrett, is something wrong?" Jemma asked as she looked out of the door after passing the tray in to Skye.

"Sort of. My man Triplett's grandmother has gone missing from her nursing home. He's a little upset. Would you have any ideas for where a ninety-seven year old who happens to be one of the former heads of our organization could have gotten to? Mind you her husband's dead, her former boyfriend is here feeding sick people, and everyone she knows at Shield happen to be trapped in the lockdowns of various buildings."

"Ninety-seven, you don't think someone could have kidnapped her, do you?" Jemma asked with a worried look.

"I wish I knew. Someone from Shield was supposed to be there to keep an eye on her, in case someone tried. No one thought it was a big risk, but as high up as Director Carter was, they weren't willing to take a chance. Trip, what about who was supposed to watch your grandmother? Did they fall asleep on the job? Oh, the flu shot thing. Okay, that makes sense. Listen, I'll check with Coulson and see if he has any ideas, and call you back, okay?"

"Flu shot thing?" Jemma asked as John ended the call.

"The nursing home found out about the defective flu shots Shield got and freaked. Insisted the agent assigned to Director Carter leave until they had proof they had been given a shot that works. There's got to be a logical explanation for this." Shield was in lock-down, Vic was about to have an unnecessary funeral, they really didn't need their former leader kidnapped on top of everything else. "I'm sure she hasn't been kidnapped or anything. I'm just glad Vic's sleeping, and won't need to find out about this."

Victoria's eyes blinked open at the sound of voices from the door. John. But wasn't he outside, and wasn't the building on lock-down? Why would he be inside? Her head was swimming and her brain was foggy from pain-killers, but something definitely wasn't right. Kidnapping? Did she hear someone talking about kidnapping? What had John managed to do while she was sick and unable to tell him that whatever he was about to try was a truly, truly idiotic idea? If her limbs didn't feel like jelly, she would kill him. What in the world had he done? She moved her head a bit, her vision blurry from the medicine and the fact she didn't have her glasses and her head bumped her phone.

Phone. Call Fury. He could deal with this. How many of John's messes had she had to fix before Fury could find out about them and explode? Fury could just handle this one on his own. What was the worst that could happen? She would be back on her feet before John could be executed if Fury messed things up too badly.

She fumbled with her phone, trying to hit the speed dial button that was set to Fury's number. But there was an icon flashing, indicating an urgent news update that her trembling fingers hit instead, and the next thing Victoria knew, a program was streaming in front of her. A funeral? Who had died? It had to be someone important. It looked like the funeral was being held in the National Cathedral to a packed crowd. Was someone dead whose funeral she should probably be at?

Then an image flashed up on the screen and the words "The Funeral of Victoria Hand" flashed across the bottom of the screen. Victoria's eyes went wide and she was suddenly sitting up, noticing for the first time that her office was filled with plants, including what looked like four enormous peace lilies. Peace lilies? Those were funeral flowers and they were in her office, and her funeral was playing on the news and…. Suddenly she was screaming, the phone tumbling out of her shaking hands. Dead? She was dead? Dead like Coulson? She didn't want to be dead like Coulson!

"Vic?" Screaming? That was her screaming. But Vic never screamed, unless she was shouting at him, and she sounded absolutely terrified. It took all that John had not to rush in there. "What's going on?!"

"Agent Hand?" Jemma rushed over to the shaking agent and dropped down beside her, her eyes going wide as she caught sight of the readings from the heart monitor she was still hooked too. Her heart rate had shot to over 160, not good.

"I think she was trying to use the phone and got this instead." Skye said as she spotted the phone and the funeral airing on it. "Wasn't the director supposed to cancel that?"

"What is going on in there?" John called again from the door. He risked looking in, but he couldn't really see anything, with both of Coulson's girls huddled at Vic's side, trying to tend her. "Vic?"

"I'm dead?" Victoria whispered. "I don't want to be dead." Her head was swimming, and there was a growing ache in her chest. "I don't want to be dead like Coulson. I don't want to be put on a plane! Don't let Fury put me on a plane like Coulson!" And tears were running down her cheeks. A plane, she would probably end up poked on the same plane as Coulson!

"Hey, what's going on?" John called again. "Vic?"

"She accidentally saw her own funeral, and with the meds Jemma gave her, she isn't taking it too well." Skye said. "Hey, Agent Hand, it's okay. That thing, it's just some stupid mistake. You're fine, we promise!" Was a heart supposed to be beating that fast, so fast that the rapid beeping on the heart monitor almost sounded like one solid beep?

"Agent Garrett, could you please get Agent Coulson up here?" Jemma called as she searched through the medicine she had on hand and then injected the strongest sedative she could find into the IV port. She didn't like the rhythm on the heart monitor at all. If she didn't get Agent Hand calmed down quickly, the poor woman was likely going to have a heart attack or worse, go into cardiac arrest. "Ma'am, it's alright. Please, just try to relax. I know what you saw was upsetting, but it was a mistake. Everything's fine, we promise."

"Vic, it's going to be okay." He didn't want to leave, but they probably did need Phil. "I'm going to get Coulson and I'll be right back. You just listen and let his girls take care of you, okay? You're going to be fine!" And if she wasn't, if something happened to her because the idiots they worked with couldn't cancel a funeral, then people were going to be dead, very, very soon!


	41. Chapter 41

"Director, what is going on?" Coulson said as soon as Fury picked up the phone. "I thought you were going to get Victoria's funeral cancelled! Do you know that it's airing live online?"

"It's on all of the major news channels too." Natasha said as she came in. "Is that Coulson? Tell him I said hello, and he shouldn't worry that anyone is blaming him for that faking his death thing. Clint and I both know he would never willingly sacrifice those cards of his. We know who's idea the entire mess was, and plan to deal with him accordingly."

"You really did ruin Phil's cards? I always thought Maria was kidding about that." Jasper said as he came in, the bell around his neck ringing for a change. "I'm surprised he hasn't killed you already for that. I just checked the TV in the break room. They've interrupted all of the morning talk shows to air footage of Victoria's funeral. Someone's saying that she might get more viewers than the last inauguration. I'll bet she would like that."

"Could I point out that this is her funeral people are watching, and Victoria isn't DEAD?" Coulson said. "Director, what are you doing to fix this? Victoria's grandparents are at this thing, and they're not young. Director Carter's at this thing."

"Director Carter's there? How did she get there?" Fury said. "Her niece has been going crazy since the nursing home reported her missing."

"Her grandson too." John said as he came in. "Who took her to a funeral for someone who isn't dead?"

"Does it matter?" Coulson said. "I think what we need to focus on is getting these poor people out of the funeral and letting them not that Victoria's alive!"

"My mother's going to try to talk to her family after the funeral." May said. But what if they hustled them off immediately for a burial? Would they actually bury an empty coffin? "Director, please tell me you didn't go ahead and select a cemetery plot too!"

"It's under a tree. It's very nice." Fury said. "And I certainly didn't tell anyone that it needed to be used at the moment!"

"So we might not be able to get to Victoria's family to let them know that she's okay until after they think they've buried her? You do know her grandfather is a hundred, right?" Coulson hadn't known it himself until now but it seemed important to mention.

"And her grandmother turns ninety-nine next month. Vic was planning to arrange for your entire team to be locked away safely somewhere so you wouldn't cause some sort of disaster that might make her miss the party. I think she might have been planning to have me shipped off to prison temporarily. Phil, we've got a big problem. Somehow Vic hit something on her phone, and that funeral was airing. She's freaking."

"What?"

"She saw her own funeral?" May demanded.

"She doesn't have her glasses, so I don't know how much she could see of it, but she saw enough that she knows the funeral was for her. She started screaming." And that scream, a terrified scream, was something that he had never, ever expected to hear from Vic. She was the bravest, strongest person he knew. "Your girls sent me to get you."

"She saw her own funeral. She's going to have a heart attack. Director, I'll call you right back." Coulson said befoe cutting off the call and hurrying out with May and John.

They could hear sobbing as soon as they opened the stairwell door.

"I don't want to be dead." Victoria was crying as they hurried down the hall to her office. "I don't want to be dead like Coulson!" But there it had been, her funeral airing live online. "I don't want to go on a plane! Is that why you're here, to get me and put me on Coulson's plane? I don't want to go on a plane! All of you hate me and you don't have any extra bedrooms on that thing! Please don't put me on a plane! Don't make me be dead like Coulson!"

"Hey, it's okay. It's okay." Skye said, trying to comfort Victoria a bit. "We don't hate you. We think you're very, very scary, but we don't hate you. It's okay. You're fine. There's just been one big, stupid mix-up. You're fine." And even though she wasn't kidding about Victoria being scary, Skye gathered her up into a tight hug. "It's okay, I promise. Jemma and I are right here. We're not going to let anyone hurt you, or put you on any planes you want to go on. And we promise if you ever visit our plane, we'll find a bedroom for you. We'll poke Ward in with Fitz or something. It will be okay. Just try to calm down, alright? Agent Garrett brought you some ice cream. Do you want to try to eat a little of that and go back to sleep? It might make you feel better."

"I don't want to be dead." Victoria whispered. She could feel her head swimming, and she couldn't keep her eyes open, but images of that funeral were dancing in her head, and wouldn't fade. "I like the Hub. I like my office. Don't make me be dead. Please don't let Fury make me dead like Coulson!"

"No one's going to do anything to you, we promise." Skye tried to reassure her. "Come on. Just a few bits of the ice cream, okay?" She looked over at Jemma as she spoke. Was that medicine that was supposed to calm Agent Hand down working at all? She was still sobbing!

"Give it a few more minutes. Ma'am, you just try to eat a little, alright? Skye's right, it will make you feel better."

Was that Victoria sobbing? Not good. This wasn't good. "Jemma?" Coulson called as he knocked on the door.

"Coulson? He's coming to get me and put me on a plane! Don't let him get me!" Victoria murmured. She could feel whatever she had been given taking effect, and she knew she wouldn't be able to defend herself if they tried to carry her off to be dead and living on a plane.

"He's not here to do anything but make sure you're okay. Come on, just a little bite of ice cream. Everything's better after ice cream." Skye said as she coaxed a tiny spoonful into Victoria's mouth. "See? Better, right?"

"Sir?" Jemma cot to her feet and hurried to the door after another worried look at the heart monitor. The medicine was starting to take effect, but she still didn't like those readings. "You need to be very quiet right now. Agent Hand's a bit upset."

"What's wrong with her?" May asked. They had heard some of what Victoria had been saying but it hadn't made a whole lot of sense.

"And more important, can you fix what's wrong?" John demanded. If they had to, they would get Vic to a hospital, no matter what Fury thought.

"I gave her the strongest sedative that I had. I need you to get a few more medicines for me. I'm going to have to put her under completely for the moment. The shock of seeing that, she was on the verge of having a heart attack, and I'm still not sure that she might not develop cardiac issues."

"A heart attack?" Coulson said, shock in his voice.

"I think when the medicines take hold I can stabilize her, and hopefully she'll think this was nothing but a bad dream, but Sir, she can't take any shocks right now. Between the stress caused by the fever and now this, anything else could kill her."


	42. Chapter 42

"A heart attack? Vic almost had a heart attack?" Vic was on the verge of a heart attack? Unfortunately, John could easily believe that with how she had been screaming, and had sounded so afraid. "Shouldn't we be getting her to a hospital right about now?" Surely a heart attack outweighed the flu on the scale of dangerous ailments. And if Vic was that bad, he wanted her in a hospital, with about a million doctors to tend and fix her! Didn't heart attacks require some sort of surgery? Coulson's girl was good, but he seriously doubted she would be able to do something like that if it became necessary.

A hospital. Where was the closest hospital in relation to the Hub? "Jemma, do we need to see about getting her to a hospital?" A heart attack. He knew that Victoria wasn't going to take it well if she found out about the funeral but she almost had a heart attack? This wasn't good. What did he know about heart attacks, well besides the fact that he had thought Stark was going to give them one a few times? He wasn't entirely sure, but Coulson thought they definitely required a hospital and possible surgery.

"I'm hoping the medicines might help before we have to consider that." Jemma said after a moment. It looked like Agent Hand had slipped into a drug induced sleep once more after letting Skye coax the ice cream down her. She was curled on her side, Skye hovering protectively at her side, gently rubbing her back to try to soothe her. "She doesn't have any history of heart problems or chest pain, does she?" She should have looked that up before, medical histories, but it had completely slipped her mind.

"She gave a general a heart attack once. Does that count?" John said. "But she's fine. Never had any problems with her heart before, even after the incident in Lisbon. If something was going to a trigger a heart problem, almost being set on fire would be enough to do it, right?"

"Almost being set on fire?"

"I got her blouse off. She didn't get burned. She was fine. After we posted bail, she was fine anyway." John said. "Really, if someea thing's wrong with her heart, shouldn't we be getting her to a hospital?"

"I'm thinking what happened was a spasm of an artery." Jemma said. "Generally those can be managed without a trip to the hospital if they're mild, and the spasm doesn't last too long. Like I said, I gave her the strongest sedative I had, and it looks like it's starting to kick in and help things. As long as that's working, keeping her here in a familiar environment is probably best. She needs to stay very calm at the moment and waking up in some strange place would likely make her worse. She seemed to have some idea that Director Fury might be repeating whatever he did with you, so…."

"In that case shouldn't she be panicking over ending up on a tropical island?" Coulson said. "Jemma, are you sure we don't need to get her to a hospital? I don't want to take any chances."

"I don't either, but I do think we can manage this here if we can just keep her calm."

"I disabled her phone. Well, it will work as a phone, but no chance of her accidentally hitting something wrong and pulling up more shocking stuff on the internet." Skye called. Poor Agent Hand. At least she looked calm now and not terrified as she drifted in her drug induced slumber. The things she had been saying, though… Did she really think that everyone on their team hated her? She would have never thought that something like that would have bothered Agent Hand. She seemed like the type that didn't care what others thought, but apparently some part of her did. How did they fix things, though, and convince her that they didn't hate her? She gently continued to rub her back as she tried to think of something.

"Disabling the phone. That should help." Jemma said. "Sir, if you can get me those medicines…"

"You're sure that we don't need to move her?" Coulson asked again.

"If I can stabilize her here, a familiar, safe place would be the best thing for her." Jemma said. "But, Sir, she can't have any additional shocks, so would you please tell the director to fix this situation now? I don't know how he let it get so far out of hand to begin with."

"We'll talk to Fury." Coulson reassured her. "Just take care of Victoria."

"Maybe you could try reading to her or something? She likes books." John suggested. "I'll find a book or something if you think that might help."

"Anything that will keep her calm will help at the moment. Thank you." Jemma said.

"She'll be fine." May had been silent the entire time they had been outside Victoria's door, but as they headed downstairs in search of medicine and possible entertainment, she tried to reassure them. "Victoria's strong, and Simmons knows what she's doing. She'll be fine."

Coulson started to reply, but then stopped as his phone rang. "Director?" He said as he saw Fury's name on the screen before answering.

"What is going on there?" Fury demanded.

"Victoria accidentally saw her funeral." Coulson told him. "And nearly had a heart attack as a result."

"A heart attack? Wait, you mean the kind of heart attack where she was furious and ready to kill us for letting things get out of hand, right?" Fury said.

"No, he means the kind of heart attack where there could be something wrong with her heart." John said before Coulson could.

"What? You mean an actual heart attack?" Fury suddenly felt like he might be having an actual heart attack himself.

"Jemma thinks she's got the situation under control, and that she can prevent things from getting worse, but that's if we can keep Victoria from experiencing any additional shocks. So whatever you have to do to fix this situation, I suggest you do it now!" Coulson told him.


	43. Chapter 43

"We gave Victoria a heart attack?" Jasper gasped. He had known she wasn't going to take everything well, if she found out about the mess with her funeral, but still, she had had a heart attack as a result? "Shouldn't you be getting her to a hospital instead of talking to us?" What if she died? Could you somehow jinx someone and cause their death if you went ahead and wrote their obituary and sent it to the paper while they were still alive? And bought them a tombstone? And a coffin? And picked out their burial plot? They had done all of that, and it had probably called down some sort of horrible karma that doomed Victoria!

"It wasn't a heart attack. He didn't say she had an actual heart attack." Fury said. But was a near heart attack much better? "Coulson, exactly what happened?"

"For some reason Vic was messing with her phone, and she must have clicked the wrong button, because the funeral popped up and she just started screaming." John said since he was the one who had been there when the problem started. He shuddered, recalling those screams. Vic mad, frustrated, annoyed, ready to kill him, those screams he was used to but a scream of pure, absolute fear, he had never heard that before and he never wanted to hear it again. "You actually let them have a funeral for her? I know Shield's supposed to be in lock-down, but letting them have a funeral for someone who isn't dead rather than break the lock-down?"

"We are trying to avoid anyone else getting sick. We have been calling constantly for the past twenty-four hours trying to get the thing cancelled. No one has returned a one of our million calls." And you would have thought someone would, if only in the hope of getting some sort of quote for what had turned into the funeral of the decade. "Exactly what did Agent Simmons say was wrong with Victoria?"

"Spasm of an artery." May said. "She thought she could take care of it with medicine, but if something else happens to upset Victoria, we could have a real problem on our hands."

Spasm of an artery. That didn't sound serious but he had a feeling it was a whole lot worse than it sounded. "Is Agent Simmons sure that Victoria doesn't need to be in a hospital?" But then this was the agent who had yelled at him for wanting tests ran on Victoria that she thought could potentially endanger her. She was being incredibly protective of the senior agent for some reason.

"She thinks she can handle it here, as long as something else doesn't happen to upset Victoria any more." Coulson said. "Director, I hate to put anyone else at risk, but it doesn't seem like phone calls are fixing this thing. I think John's right. You need to break that lock-down and get someone over to that funeral fast to put a stop to this."

"My mother's going to try to talk to Victoria's family after the service." May said.

"But there are over 3000 people there and they've got the burial and then wakes scheduled at the Watergate and the White House afterwards." Maria said as she looked up from checking her phone for funeral updates.

"So my mother may not be able to get anywhere near them."

"Right. I'll handle it. Tell Agent Simmons I'm going to handle it now. The funeral and the death issue are going to be taken care of." Fury said as he ended the call and reached into his desk for his car keys. He just hoped he could manage to get there before they left for the wake at the Watergate. He had no desire to have his car toed again. "Maria, call Agent Carter and have her meet me downstairs. She can pick up her aunt and get her back home where she belongs."

As Fury and Maria both left to hopefully fix the mess that was Victoria's death, Jasper's phone rang.

"Jasper, have you seen what's happening online? Victoria's funeral is fast approaching the last royal wedding in numbers of viewers! What is Fury doing about this?"

"He's on his way to try to straighten it out now. Felix, we have a major problem." Jasper said as he hurried down the hall and into the thankfully empty break room. "Victoria saw the funeral online."

"What?"

"She saw it. She somehow hit something on her phone, and there the funeral was, live and shocking. Felix, Phil called and that scientist of his that's been looking after Victoria, she says the news almost gave her a heart attack!"

"A heart attack? Do you mean the kind of heart attack that will lead to all of us needing funerals or…."

"The other kind. The kind that might lead to Victoria needing a real funeral." But how would they do that, if she died for real after they had already gone to so much trouble over a funeral that was a mistake? They would have to do it all over again, wouldn't they? But did insurance cover two funerals?

The other kind of heart attack. Not good. "But you said she almost had a heart attack. She didn't actually have one, right?"

"She had some sort of spasm of an artery. I'm not sure what that is, but it doesn't sound wonderful. And it sounds painful too."

Spasm artery heart. Felix typed those words into his computer and a few seconds later he was cringing as he started to read. "Coronary artery spasm. Emotional stress can cause it."

"And seeing your own funeral would definitely count for emotional stress." Victoria was going to kill them and he couldn't blame her one bit. How had this situation gotten so far out of hand.

"Uh, oh."

"Uh, oh? I don't like that. Why did you say uh, oh?" Jasper demanded. And why was he sensing a new complication?

"One of the things it says you should avoid if you have a coronary artery spasm, high stress situations. Wouldn't you say that being a senior Shield agent would count as a high stress situation?" Felix said.

"So Victoria might not be able to be a agent anymore? Early retirement?"

"This can lead to heart attacks. Would Fury want to take the risk that she could have a heart attack in the middle of running a major operation?"

"Retirement. What have we done?" Jasper moaned as he buried his head in his hands. Victoria was going to kill them if she was forced to retire. That is if a heart problem didn't kill her first!


	44. Chapter 44

"What's going on? Bruce said as he came down the hall. "Tony came and got me, and said there was something going on with Agent Hand? What happened?"

"Her funeral's airing live on the internet and she somehow ended up seeing it." Coulson said. Banner. Why hadn't he thought to get Banner? At least Stark had the good sense to do that. "She didn't take it well. Agent Simmons said it caused an artery to spasm. Have you ever seen that before?"

"Dealing with Betty's father, I've seen people come close a few times." Bruce said.

"Should we be getting her to a hospital or something?" John asked. Coulson's girl had seemed to think that she could handle this, but still, if there was any chance that Vic could get worse, he really thought they ought to be getting her to a hospital. What if she had an actual heart attack from whatever that artery spasm thing was?

"What's Agent Simmons doing for her?" Bruce asked.

"She sedated her, and then she sent us to get these." Coulson said as he handed over the list that Jemma had given them. "Is there a chance this could get worse?" Jemma seemed to think she could manage the situation, but still part of him wondered if they shouldn't be trying to get Victoria moved to a hospital to be on the safe side. If she did have an actual heart attack, didn't that usually call for surgery? Jemma was good, and Banner was actually a real doctor, but would either of them have a clue about how to do heart surgery? Didn't that call for a specialist?

"There's a chance it could if the artery spasms again. If it goes on too long, or the spasm closes off the artery enough to cut blood flow to a section of the heart, it can cause an actual heart attack." Bruce told them rather reluctantly.

"Actual heart attack." Not good. "If she had an actual heart attack, how fast would she need to be in a real hospital?" John asked. If there was any chance at all that Vic could end up having an actual heart attack, he didn't know why they were standing around talking about it instead of dragging her off to the best hospital they could find.

"Do you want me to go and talk to Agent Simmons? If it seems like the spasm's eased off, and the sedatives are helping, the best thing would be to keep her here. She doesn't have any history of heart problems or any other health issues that could cause trouble, does she?"

"She's fine. The police had someone check her out after the incident in Lisbon, and the doctor said her blood pressure was barely 120 over something, and that was after nearly being set on fire and a very close encounter with smoke inhalation. If Vic had any issues with her heart, something like that would have triggered it before now, right?" But what if it had done something, caused some sort of silent, unnoticed, damaging issue that coupled with this latest incident could lead to a heart attack and disaster? "Really, wouldn't it be a good idea to get her to a hospital to be on the safe side?"

"If it's just an artery that's spasmed, basically what they would do for her in the hospital is what Agent Simmons is doing now, nitroglycerine to help with the pain and to cause the blood vessels to dilate, and probably watching her for a few hours on a monitor before letting her go with the suggestion to see a cardiologist. That can be done here, and at least here, we can hopefully keep her from hearing anything else about the mess that's been made with that funeral. In a hospital, it would be a whole lot harder to keep her in the dark about that."

"Someone would probably leak information on her to the press." May said. "And if seeing her funeral caused a problem, can you imagine how Victoria would take it to wake up with reporters everywhere?"

"Cardiologist? If you need to consult with one of them, I know plenty. Would that help if you could teleconference or something?" Tony asked as he came down the hall to join them.

"That might be a good idea." Bruce said. "If for nothing else than to be on the safe side."

"You know a doctor who would be willing to do that?" Coulson asked. He was sure Shield had cardiologists at one of their medical facilities, but with how crazy things were with the flu issue, it might be faster to go with a doctor Tony could come up with. And then there was the problem with the doctors who had said Victoria was dying with nothing to back it up. Who knows what sort of mistake they might make if asked to teleconference over a possible heart issue. Better to go with an outsider.

"If you pay people enough, they'll do anything, which probably explains why human resources hasn't fled the my building screaming by now. I know of one doctor, Kaplan I think's his name. Pepper could probably get him pretty quick if you think it's a good idea."

"Let me check with Agent Simmons and see what she thinks." Bruce said. "I'm sure she'll be fine with it, though."

Teleconference, it wasn't as good as lagging Vic to a hospital, but it was surely better than nothing. John started to pray again as he followed Coulson and May down the hall to medical while Benner headed upstairs. Just let Vic be okay. He would do better, he would be better, he would change for the better if she would just get through this. She had fought so hard. She didn't deserve for something to happen to her now because their boss and other co-workers were idiots and planned her funeral prematurely. Just let her be okay!

In case you didn't read it on one of my other stories, I lost my baby kitty on Saturday. He was a Victoria fan, and would sit with me while I was writing and urge me not to damage the poor woman too much. My current three stories are dedicated to him now. I love you so much, Pinky and I miss my writing buddy!


	45. Chapter 45

"Jemma, she is going to be okay, isn't she?" Skye asked as she looked up. Agent Hand was quiet, lost in a drugged sleep, but it didn't seem like a peaceful sleep. Skye could practically feel the fear still radiating off of her, and what she had said, about everyone on their team hating her, it was haunting her. Agent Hand seemed like the type who wouldn't care what anyone else thought of her, who was secure in who she was and the decisions that she was making, but for something like that to slip out when pain, and fear and medicines were messing with her head, on some level it had to bother her. But how could they fix it? Agent Hand was big and scary, but for her to think that they hated her it just didn't sit right with Skye, but how in the world were they going to manage to fix it?

Jemma studied the monitors before replying. Agent Hand's heart rhythm seemed stable once more, and the rate was hovering around 80. That was a good sign, but still with how weak the fever and the flu had left her, Jemma wasn't completely comfortable that she wasn't still in a degree of danger. What was taking Agent Coulson so long to bring those medicines she had requested? She would feel a whole lot more secure dealing with potential cardiac problems if she had the drugs to treat them on hand.

"Jemma? She is going to be okay, right?" Skye asked again when Jemma didn't answer immediately. And if Jemma thought there was even a chance Agent Hand wasn't going to be okay, why were they still sitting here, and not getting her to a hospital?

"Sorry. I'm just being paranoid, I know." Jemma shook her head and forced herself to focus. "Her vital signs look good. I'm almost positive that as long as we can keep her from experiencing further shocks, that she'll be fine."

"Well, I fixed her phone where she can't get online again, and her computer's locked down." Skye said. "Is there anything else that we can do for her?"

"Not until Agent Coulson and the others get back with the medicine. At least I can't think of anything, except to talk to her, perhaps, and let her know that we're with her."

"I'm not sure if that would help or not, since she has the idea that Fury's trying to pull the same thing with her that he did with AC. And that she's about to become the newest resident of our plane." Skye said as she gently rubbed Victoria's back in small circles. Between dealing with the worst case of the flu even and now this, Agent Hand just looked so absolutely small, and small was an awful look for her. And her hair, four days of being sick in bed had definitely not been good for her poor hair. "Do you see a brush or something in her desk? Maybe brushing would help a little."

Brush. Jemma opened drawers and pushed things around until she found a hairbrush to hand to Skye. "We probably need to see about getting her cleaned up a bit. That might help her feel a little better."

"A bath, even a sponge bath, would probably feel really good." Skye agreed as she ran the brush through Agent Hand's hair, carefully trying to work out the tangles without pulling. "Do you think there would be some way to wash her hair for her too? I know that the dry stuff is supposed to work fine, but I've tried it, and it doesn't feel as good as real water and shampoo."

Real shampoo. That might a bit tricky, but Skye was probably right that it would make Agent Hand feel better than the dry type. Surely they could figure out a way to manage it. She pulled out a pen and quickly scribbled another list. Towels, washcloths, soap, plenty of warm water, cups and bowls for pouring water, a fresh gown and shampoo. "You don't think her hair needs a special shampoo, do you? I would hate to use the wrong thing, and damage those red streaks."

"One time with the wrong thing, I'm sure it wouldn't hurt." Skye said. "When her fever came down and she started sweating like crazy, that didn't do anything, and I would think being drenched in sweat would be way worse than the wrong shampoo for hair, right?"

Before Jemma could reply, there was a knock on the door.

"Agent Simmons?" Bruce called. "I heard what happened, with Agent Hand, and I was wanting to see if there was anything I could do. How is she?"

"She's better." Jemma said as she went to the door. "Heartrate's around 80 and the rhythm's stable. Blood pressure was around 115 over 70 when I checked it. Do you know if Agent Coulson was able to find those medicines? I would really like to get her on the nitroglycerine as a precaution."

"They're looking for the medicines." Bruce told her. "Tony suggested something, though, and I thought I would see if you think it might be a good idea. He knows a lot of cardiologists after his heart thing, and he offered to set up a teleconference if we thought it might be a good idea. It sounds like she's fine, and what you're doing is working, but if you think it would be a good idea, he's happy to set up something."

"That would be wonderful." Jemma was sure that what she was doing was correct, and the standard treatment for what had happened, but still, consulting with an expert if they were willing would be wonderful, in case there was something new that she might not have heard about yet. "Please tell Mister Stark thank you for me!"

"I will and I'll let you know when we set something up. Is there anything else you need?"

"If you could give this to Agent Coulson?" Jemma asked as she passed the list she had made under the door. "We were thinking getting cleaned up a bit might make Agent Hand feel better."

"Bath. Probably a good idea." Bruce said. "I'll give it to them and then go talk to Tony about that teleconference, okay?"

"How is she?" Coulson, May and John were just coming through the stairwell door when Bruce reached it.

"Her vitals are good. She's stable. I think she's going to be fine. Agent Simmons said we could go ahead and set up a teleconference with that cardiologist, but really, it's going to be a precaution more than anything at this point."

Coulson sighed with relief. Fine. Victoria was going to be fine, and hopefully Fury was going to be able to get the entire mess with her funeral straightened out. This was going to be okay.

"What's that list?" John asked as he spotted the paper in Bruce's hand. Did Vic need more medicines? But how could she be okay if she needed more medicines?

"Agent Simmons thought it might help make Agent Hand more comfortable if they could clean her up a bit." Bruce said as he handed the list over.

"I'll handle hunting down this stuff." John offered. Vic would probably hate the idea of being so sick that she needed someone to bathe her and wash her hair for her, but Coulson's girls were right, it would make her feel a lot better. He started back down the stairs as he read the list. Towels, now where could he find some nice, soft, fluffy towels? Vic would have his head if he brought up the scratchy towels that they used in the training rooms for her. Maybe Phil had something on that plane of his. He had always used fabric softener and nice towels. That ought to work. And hopefully by the time he was back with everything, Fury would have called with the good news he had fixed that mess with Vic's funeral.

"Aunt Peggy!" Sharon Carter sighed with relief as she spotted her aunt. With traffic, they hadn't been able to get to the funeral service before it was over, and they had missed the burial as well. But finally they had been able to get into the wake, and Director Fury had sent her to find her aunt while he alerted people to the fact that Agent Hand was alive.

Peggy looked at the young woman in confusion for a moment before she placed the face. "Sharon? Could you tell me what's going on? The nicest people from the White House came to get me this morning, and told me that poor Victoria had passed away. But I've been talking to Agent May, and she says that she's fine. Why would Nick let them have a funeral for someone who isn't dead?"

"We've been having a few problems with the flu." Agent May? Was her aunt… No, she spotted the older lady that could only be Agent May's mother standing a few feet away and remembered she was an agent too, although with a different agency. "Director Fury's getting everything straightened out now."

"Excuse me." Agent May's mother said as she came over. "But could I ask where those people are taking your director?"

"What?" Sharon spun, her eyes going wide as she spotted Fury, who had obviously been hit with some sort of fast acting drug, being taken out of the room by a group of people dressed in medical uniforms that looked alarmingly like the outfits the staff at the local mental institution wore. They were dragging Fury off to the mental home? After the mess with Agent Hand's funeral, okay, maybe he felt like he needed a nice long stay there, but still…. "Come on, Aunt Peggy! We've got to go help him!"

They reached the door just in time to see Fury being tossed into the back of a van, a van from the mental institution. Sharon had been right about those uniforms. Perfect, just perfect. And wasn't that the director's car, being drug away by a tow truck?

"I don't suppose I could beg a ride, could I?" Sharon asked Agent May's mother as she pulled out her phone and hit Agent Hill's number. "Hey, we have a little problem. Director Fury was trying to alert people that Agent Hand isn't dead, and apparently they thought that was a sign of insanity. He was just drug away in the back of a van heading for the mental institution. What am I supposed to do now?"


	46. Chapter 46

"Agent Garrett raided the BUS for all of our towels." Skye said as she pulled the cart into Agent Hand's office, and started to unload the supplies. What looked like every towel on that had been on the BUS, and a stack of washcloths too. Several giant containers that had to hold fifty gallons of water between them. Little bottles of shampoos, conditioners and lotions and tiny bars of soap. Hair dryer. A garbage bag with the opening rolled down and lined with more towels like the instructions they had found online for making a makeshift setup to wash the hair of someone in bed had shown. "Looks like he did a little checking online, too, to figure out how we were going to have to do this? Bath or hair first?"

"Hair's probably best." Jemma said after a moment. "That way if we spill anything, we won't have to change her clothes twice. Ma'am?" She called as she checked what Agent Garrett had brought again, and then the instructions they had found using Skye's phone. She thought that Agent Hand was too deeply asleep to hear her, but still, if she could at all, it was best to tell her what they were doing. "We're going to wash your hair for you, alright? That should make you feel much better."

"Which one do you want to use? Agent Garrett brought up a variety." Skye asked as she held out a couple of the shampoos. "I kind of like this one. It smells like roses. Do you think that might be a good scent for her? It's not really strong so don't think it would be too much."

"Flowers should be fine." And Agent Garrett did know Agent Hand, so they shouldn't have to worry about him sending them something she might be allergic too. "Alright, I'm sorry if this is a bit awkward, Ma'am. I've never tried this before, but we looked up up online, and the instructions were very well written. I'm sure we can manage." Jemma said as they moved Agent Hand a bit, so her head was partially hanging off the edge of her makeshift bed, and so her hair fell down into the garbage bag that was going to be their makeshift basin. Skye ran some of the water from the first pot over Agent Hand's hair with a cup to wet it, and then Jemma started working the shampoo in. Not hard at all. This would be fine, she was sure.

A fog. She felt like she was drifting in a fog, with no idea which end was up, or how to find her way out but Victoria could hear voices surrounding her, and then hands touching her. What were they doing, though? She could only make out a few words. Something about John? John had taken to prayer. Her brain wasn't working right, but she remembered that at least. Prayer and reading the Bible. Did she want to know what he had done that he thought that prayer was his only hope? And was that shampoo that had just been mentioned? Victoria suddenly had a bad, bad feeling. John had teased her once, warning her to be sure not go get her shampoo mixed up with whatever Abigail Brand used that had resulted in her green hair. If John thought that her being ill and trapped in bed was the perfect time to pull a joke… But there was nothing she could do about it if he was pulling something, she realized. And the fingers, working through her hair, working in the shampoo that she feared was sabotaged were very nice, the touch light and gentle but firm enough that she already felt cleaner than she had a few minutes before. Maybe she would be okay with green hair, at least for a little while? Who knows, it might look nice. And then the fingers stopped moving, and there was water, splashing over her hair, and something else being worked in as she felt herself drifting back into the fog and thoughts of anything slipped away as she slid into a deep, drugged sleep once more.

"It looks a lot better, and it isn't even dry yet." Skye commented as Jemma worked the conditioner in. It looked like the instructions for how to wash her hair were working perfectly too. "We need to let the conditioner set for a few minutes, right? Should we do her bath while we're waiting on that?"

"That might be a good idea." Jemma said. This was going much, much better than she had thought it would. Skye wet one of the washcloths as Jemma eased Agent Hand out of the hospitall gown. "We're just going to get you cleaned up a bit, Ma'am. It's going to help you, we promise. You're going to feel much better in just a little bit." Jemma was as gentle as possible, running the soapy washcloth over first arms and legs and then body, rubbing in little, gentle cycles that she hoped would offer a bit of comfort as well as cleaning. Skye got another washcloth and came along behind her, rinsing the soap away as she finished each area, and then using a towel to gently blot the skin dry before rubbing on the lotion.

She looks a lot better." Skye said when they were done, Agent Hand in a clean gown and the only drying her hair left to do. "What she said, though? Do you really think she believes that we all hate her?"

"It might have been the medicine." Jemma offered. "I gave her something fairly strong. It could have confused her."

"She didn't really sound confused, though. Even the thing she was saying with the plane, just look at what Fury pulled with AC. Him trying the same thing with her would make perfect sense, at least it would make more sense than what really happened. I'm afraid that she really does think we hate her. How do we even try to fix that? I don't want her to think we hate her."

Jemma definitely felt the same way, but she wasn't sure what to suggest. "The only thing I can think of is to keep doing what we're doing, taking care of her, and trying to make her comfortable. Hopefully something about that will be enough to get through to her, and make her realize that she was wrong and we don't hate her." It was the only idea that she had. Poor Agent Hand. She really had seemed upset, and Jemma hated to let her think that she was with people who hated her, but with the medicine and the effects of the flu still wracking her body, she wasn't sure what they really could do to fix the situation besides continuing to take care of her, and hope actions spoke louder than words.

"Hello?" Sharon called as she hurried to the front desk of the mental institution, her aunt and Agent May's mother following along behind. She pulled out her badge and held it out. "I'm Agent Sharon Carter from Shield. Our director was…" How could she put it nicely? Somehow she didn't think saying that their director had been drugged, tossed in a van and drug off to their hospital would get her anywhere. "Director Fury was brought here just a bit ago. I was wanting to get an update on him."

"Director Fury?" A doctor called as he came down the hallway towards them. "He's been admitted on a 72 hour hold. The Chief of Staff at the White House called himself to arrange it."

"A 72 hour hold?" Sharon said. "For what reason?"

"He attempted to disrupt a wake." The doctor told them. "We believe that he has suffered a serious psychotic break and might pose a threat to himself or others if he was released into society at this time."

"A…. Okay, I was at that wake for Agent Hand." Sharon said. Not good, this was not good.

"Yes, your director seems to be laboring under the delusion that this Agent Hand is still alive." The doctor said. "Were they close?"

"Sharon, didn't you say poor Victoria was alive?" Peggy said. "I don't know why in the world they would have a funeral for her if she was alive. And the President was there. Wouldn't he know if poor Victoria was alive?"

Just perfect. Now the doctor was looking at her like she might be in need of a little stay at the mental home too. If she got locked up, how was her aunt going to get home? Maybe she could beg Agent May's mother to give her a ride?

"It's the oddest thing now that I think about it. There was a mix-up with Phil too. Poor Steve. He was so upset when he told me about Phil dying. And Howard's boy Tony told me the same thing. But then Nick came to see me and said Phil was fine. But Steve, I don't think he would have an idea how to lie, and he said he was at Phil's funeral."

"So, your director has had this issue before?" the doctor said, temporarily forgetting about any plans to grab Sharon to be locked away too for denying Victoria's death. Director Fury, denying two people who had worked under him were dead, on two separate occasions, the man obviously had serious, serious issues.

"I wouldn't say they're issues." Sharon said.

"That is odd about Agent Coulson. Melinda told me he was dead too. I even sent flowers to his funeral. Then a few months ago she called and said he was alive." Agent May's mother said.

"So this is a deep seated problem with your organization." the doctor said. "That's very alarming to say the least."

"It's not an issue. Really, it's not. Well, maybe a communications issue, but…. Listen, would it be possible to get Director Fury transferred back to Shield's custody? We'll be happy to get him any help we think he might need."

"I'm afraid not without a court order." the doctor said. "In the meantime, I'm thinking a course of electro-convulsive therapy might be the best treatment to snap him out of these delusions."


	47. Chapter 47

Bowls of soup, and with the kitchen working again, they had been able to heat bread to go with it. Agent May was loading carts with food to be taken round for the sick agents' lunches, and silently offering up thanks that Captain Rogers was actually decent at spoon feeding the agents who were still sick enough to need it when her phone rang.

"Mom?" She said as she answered it, and it hit her that she had told her mother she would send her pictures of Victoria to show to her family so they would know she was okay. "I'm sorry. We ran into a problem here. I forgot to get those pictures to you. Just a minute and I'll find Coulson. Have you tried to talk to Victoria's family yet? How are they?"

"Agent Coulson. That's what I'm calling about." Her mother said. Maybe it was nothing, she hoped it was nothing, but what the doctor had said was concerning her. "You were very upset when you called and said that he had died, Melinda."

"Yes, I was upset, Mom. I thought he was dead. What's going on? Have you talked to Victoria's family yet?" Why was she suddenly getting a very bad feeling. And why was she hearing noises that reminded her of a hospital in the background? "Mom, where are you?"

Before her mother could reply, Tony came wandering in. "Have you seen Coulson?" he asked. "Pepper just sent me a text. Fury got himself drug away to the funny farm a little bit ago. Which doesn't really surprise me, but I thought Agent might like to know. You don't need Fury to sign your paychecks or anything, right?"

"The… Mom, please tell me you aren't at the mental institution they just drug our boss away to!"

"Director Carter's niece needed a ride." her mother said. "Melinda, I'm a little concerned, First you tell me Phil is dead, and I sent flowers to his funeral. Then you call me out of the blue and say he's alive, but…."

"He is alive!" Fury had got himself drug off to the mental institution for some reason, and why did she suddenly have a feeling her mother was wondering if she needed a little visit there as well? But there was Coulson, coming down the hall. "Here." She hurried to meet him and shoved the phone into his hands. "Please say hello to my mother and let her know that you aren't dead before I end up being Director Fury's new roommate!"

"Hello? Is there some sort of problem?" Coulson said.

"Agent Coulson?" Melinda's mother said. It did sound like him. "Could I ask why I was told you were dead? I sent flowers to your funeral."

"Apparently a lot of people did." Coulson said. "If you're looking for a refund, I suppose accounting would be who you need to talk to. I would normally suggest Victoria, but she's sleeping off the flu."

"Victoria? She is alive?"

"Yes. Didn't your daughter tell you she was okay?"

"Send her the pictures." May told him. "Mom, he's going to send you pictures of Victoria."

"Okay." Coulson said as he pulled out his phone and a minute later hit send after finding the correct photos. "What's going on?"

"Your boss is in the funny farm for trying to disrupt a wake." Tony said before May could think of a way to break Fury's current location to him gently.

"What? Melinda…." Nick had gotten drug off to a mental institution? How was that even possible?

"I'm trying to find out what happened. Call Maria and see what she has to say." May said. "Mom, did you get the pictures?"

"Yes." her mother said as she looked at them. It was Victoria, pale and sick-looking, wrapped in blankets on what looked like a makeshift bed on the floor, an IV dripping into one arm. But she did look alive. "Could I ask why Victoria's on the floor, instead of in a hospital bed if she's that sick?"

"To prevent her from being exposed to more germs while she's so weak from fighting the flu. She has two people hovering over her, and we've got a doctor here to consult with. She's fine. Mom, please, can you find Victoria's family, and show them the pictures so they'll know she's okay?"

"It might be a bit. I can't just go off and leave Director Carter and her niece without a way home. Someone towed your director's car. You know, things like this never happen in my agency, Melinda. What is Director Fury doing with yours?"

"That's what Coulson's trying to find out. Just please, Mom, get to Victoria's family as soon as you can." Melinda told her. "They need to know that Victoria's okay."


	48. Chapter 48

"Phil?" Even with the mess she had on her hands, Maria was glad when she picked up the phone and saw Coulson's number. But then she remembered what he had reported about Victoria the last time he called and worry washed over her. "How's Victoria?" Maybe they needed to see about getting her moved to a hospital to be on the safe side? She really, really didn't want to take chances. "If you need to get her to a hospital, whatever you need to do, do it. Fury isn't here now but…."

"Victoria's fine. Just had a bath that apparently called for using every towel we had on the BUS."

"A bath." And as sick as Victoria was, obviously this bath would have to be of the sponge variety. She would hate that, being so weak that she needed others to take care of her like that, bathing her and tending her every need. But it probably had made her feel a whole lot better. "So she's doing alright?" If they were bathing her and getting her cleaned up, wasn't that a sign she was doing okay?

"She's fine. Stark's arranging a teleconference with a cardiologist he knows just to be on the safe side, but Agent Simmons and Banner think she's going to be fine, at least as long as she doesn't experience any further shocks. What happened to Nick? Could I ask how he ended up in a mental institution?"

"You heard about that already. Of course, it made the news. Of course you've heard about it. He went to try to let Victoria's family know that she was okay, and to stop the funeral, or burial or wake or whatever ceremony he could make it in time for. Except when he told some of the president's staff that this was a misunderstanding, that that Victoria was fine, they decided that was a sign that he had snapped from the stress of the flu outbreak and losing his very valuable agent. They had him sedated and taken away to the closest mental institution. Agent Carter's there now with her aunt and Agent May's mother. And I'm here trying to find a judge that isn't at Victoria's wake to sign an order getting him transferred back to Shield custody." She didn't know what in the world she was going to do if she didn't find a judge who would sign papers to get the director back. It was Friday. If she didn't find one fast, Fury was going to be spending a long weekend in a padded cell.

"Bad news!" Jasper called as he came in. "Looks like our judicial system has shut down for the day. Not a judge to be found. They're all either at Victoria's wake or they decided to take the day off. Did you know she got the entire Supreme Court to attend?"

"She isn't dead! I don't think she'll be happy to know who attended her wake when she isn't dead!" Maria grumbled. "You couldn't find a judge? What about a law clerk who knows how to forge signatures? Could you find one of those?"

"No judges means that all of the law clerks, at least the ones who couldn't find a way to attend the wake, got to go home early." Jasper said. "Wait, who's on the phone? Is that Phil? How's Victoria? She's doing okay, isn't she?"

"Victoria's fine." But Fury wouldn't be, at least if what Sharon had reported about the doctor's plans for his treatment were correct. But without a judge to sign the paperwork….

"Maria, what's going on?" Coulson demanded. "You can't find a judge? What's going to happen to Nick if you can't find a judge to sign the papers to get him released?"

"The doctors have him admitted on a 72 hour hold. If I don't find a judge, then he spends the weekend in the mental institution, and might be booked for close encounter with electricity. I'll find a judge. I'll get him out."

"Electricity? Wait, they're wanting to do shock therapy on him?" Coulson demanded.

"That's what Sharon says the doctor was talking about. I'm hoping he wasn't serious, or if he was, that it it might take a bit to get it sit up. I'll get him out before then. There has got to be a judge somewhere." Finding one was definitely looking like a problem, though. Maybe it would impress Victoria a bit, to see the kind of attention her supposed death had led to?

"Hey, Agent?" Stark called as he looked up from his phone, and then clicked on the link in the text Pepper had just sent. "You might want to take a look at this. Agent Hand's family is on the news."

"On the news? Please tell me they're alright!" Coulson and May hurried over and looked at the screen in Stark's hands. If something happened to her family, Victoria would definitely have a heart attack, and Fury might need the mental institution for real.

"Worse. They're being interviewed." Tony said as he handed over the phone. "Sweet grieving senior citizens talking about the poor granddaughter they just buried, I don't think your director's getting out of the funny farm any time soon."

"That's Victoria's grandmother?" Coulson said as he looked at the woman on the screen. She was small, probably not even five feet tall. How did someone that small end up with a granddaughter that was so big? Her husband didn't look much bigger than her and…. Wait, doesn't Victoria dye those streaks into her hair?" He could have sworn that she did, but when her grandmother turned her head, there was a red streak that looked like it matched Victoria's in the hair twisted into a bun on the top of her head.

"She was such a wonderful, wonderful granddaughter." Victoria's grandmother told the reporter who was talking to her. "She wasn't able to come home as often as she wanted, or as often as we would like, but she called every chance she got. We couldn't have asked for a better, sweeter granddaughter than Victoria. And she had such a good heart. Her father wanted her to be an accountant, but she always wanted to make the world a better place. That's why she joined Shield."

"Do you blame Shield for what happened?" the reporter asked.

"No. And what they arranged for Victoria, she would have been so pleased. Everything was exactly the way Victoria would have wanted it to have been handled." Her grandmother blinked back tears and grabbed for her husband's hand. "Victoria loved Shield. She devoted twenty years of her life to them and believed in what they were doing, how they were trying to protect the world and make it a better, safer place. We know how important that is. And we know that a lot of other people are sick with the same thing that took our Victoria away from us so…"

"We don't know what happened, not exactly." Her grandfather said as his wife started to sob. "The flu, that's what they said it was, and a lot of other are apparently sick with the same thing, so we know that Shield's busy, but surely someone could call and let us know exactly what happened."

"We don't blame them." his wife pulled herself together enough to speak again. "Victoria loved Shield, and she always talked to us about the people she worked with and how important they were. We just need to know what happened. Was there someone with her when she died? If nothing else, I need to know that, that she wasn't alone. Please, just let me know that someone was with her to hold her hand when we couldn't be there, please. That's all I want to know, that my poor sweet little girl didn't die alone."

"Maria?" Coulson said as the interview ended with both of Victoria's grandparents breaking down in tears. "Did you see?"

"Oh, yes." A wave of guilt washed over her. How had things gotten so out of hand that Victoria's grandparents were sobbing on national television? Victoria was going to kill them when she found out, and if the doctors who were dealing with Fury saw, he was heading for electo-shock therapy for sure. There was no way they would believe this was an innocent mistake after seeing those two poor people sobbing, and begging to know that their granddaughter hadn't died alone.

"No one's told them that Vic's okay?" John had came in just in time to catch the last of the interview. "Wasn't Fury going to do something about that?" If Vic ever found out about this, a lot of people were going to die, and then she would probably have a heart attack afterwards.

"Fury tried. Only when he tried, some people from the White House thought he had lost it, and he got drug away to the mental institution for the next 72 hours if Maria can't find a judge to sign papers to release him to Shield."

"He might want to see about booking a longer stay. Vic's grandparents are crying over this mess, she's going to kill him if she finds out." John said. "Is anyone trying to let them know she's okay?"

"My mother's going to try, but it might take awhile." May said. But with the reporters everywhere, trying to interview them, would her mother even be able to get to talk to those poor people? This was a disaster of epic proportions!


End file.
